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Thanks, everyone, for coming to our campaign kick off breakfast! We kept the speeches brief
and, right after, we hit the campaign trail. Councilman Barry Goode, Mayor Adrian Mapp, Charles McRae, and I were out all day yesterday, knocking on doors and talking with neighbors. With Bonnie Watson Coleman Over the next five weeks, I will be coming to your block to ask for your support as I vie for the open council seat to become your citywide at-large councilor. I will be campaigning with our Freeholder Linda Carter (Plainfield's own!) and the rest of the COLUMN A Democrats. Linda and I and the rest of our campaign team will be in your neighborhood soon. I am also proud to be on the ballot with Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman, the first African American woman to be elected to Congress from New Jersey. We will be campaigning with our congresswoman as well. Please visit our website to join our grassroots movement! We look forward to seeing you all on the campaign trail as we continue to KEEP PLAINFIELD MOVING FORWARD! |
Elijah and Timothy eating at the high chair thing. It is a high chair but converts into this table thing and flip it over and it is a rocking thing. :) Timothy enjoyed his pizza! Elijah is a breadstick man!! He could eat his weight in breadsticks! Miss Sarah loves cheese pizza! Pepperoni is Isaac's favorite kind of pizza! We went to Alabama this past weekend and had Christmas with Bryan's family. We left Saturday at noon and arrived at Bryan's oldest brother's house around 4:45 p.m. We enjoyed getting to see everyone and exchanging gifts! I took my camera but completely forgot to get it out of the van. :( There are 9 kiddos and 10 adults in Bryan's immediate family, so there was a house full. My kids had so much fun. So wish I had gotten some pictures, but oh well! Then we spent the night Saturday and Sunday with my parents. So nice to spend some time with them also. On Sunday night we had pizza for supper. I remembered to get my camera out and snap a few shots. Actually I remembered my camera when the two little boys were sitting at the high chair together. When Isaac and Sarah were little my mom bought this high chair (3 in 1) thing, it's really neat! We have a couple of pictures of them sitting at this thing together. My kids love this thing! So I snapped a picture of each of the kids eating pizza. Joanna had a piece of pizza but I didn't get a picture. :( We came home Monday morning and have been getting ready for Christmas ever since. Can't believe that Christmas will be here THIS Sunday!! We have been doing a Christmas theme for school this week. It is putting us in the Christmas mood! I will share later about all that and the things we have done and are doing! |
I have been silent for a while, some might rejoice at that and hope it continues, others may have missed my mouthing off, to them, a thank you. Circumstances have made it difficult to carry out my usual routine, but things are beginning to fall into place again. My silence is in no way an indication that the hatred and anger that I hold for this exploitative greed drive system of capitalism has diminished, on the contrary, reflection has only strengthened my desire to do what I can, in my own humble way, to help bring about the demise of the capitalist system and with it, all its injustices, inequalities, exploitation, misery, deprivation and of course its endless wars for power. However, I thought I would make my first few lines on another subject, that love of mine, cycling. Wednesday was probably the best day we in Scotland have had for a while, around 17 degrees, blue sky and a not too nasty a wind, about 12 mph, so it was a little circle round my usual Campsie area. One peculiar aspect of Wednesday on the outward journey, was the absence of motor vehicles, a rare occurrence on our roads nowadays, making the road a very pleasant place for cyclists. The return journey was back to the usual speeding tin boxes, screaming past in both directions. Again there were lots of cyclists out on the road, usually passing me with a friendly "Hi", I'm getting used to them passing me, and as they do, I usually murmur to myself, "ah, those were the days my friend, we thought they would never end--". I have always been a road cyclist and have very, very rarely ventured onto cycle tracks. However I thought I would give the one that runs through the Campsie area a wee try, and joined it before it reaches Lennoxtown. I can recommend it, well the short patch that I followed. It was a pleasant ride on a smooth tarmac surface, and no worries about HGVs and speeding off-roaders. Cycle track just before it ends as you enter Lennoxtown. Visit ann arky's home at |
The Santa Fe Wine and Chile Fiesta is happening right now (September 23-27). Congress is considering reauthorization of the 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, which includes the national school lunch program. Another new brewery launched in New Mexico this week (seems like there’s a new one every week). Albuquerque Business First profiled the opening of Rio Bravo Brewing and the paper highlighted the ongoing struggles of one restaurant in Nob Hill. And a powerful storm moved through Albuquerque on Tuesday, dumping rain and hail on most of the city. The damage from pea-sized hail was visible on crops at Red Tractor Farm. What food stories are you following right now? |
No, this is not our child! Some friends of ours had their baby boy just 2 weeks ago! It worked out perfectly that we already had plans to be in Tulsa the next day for Ryan to go to class so we were able to go meet him! He is a good size boy weighing in at 8lbs 14oz with a full head of hair too! Such a cutie! Ryan was really nervous about holding him and when it came time to pass him on to the next visitor he said, "I may need some help." Ever since then he has been mentioning how he is really afraid that he is going to be clumsy and somehow drop Hudson. How sweet :) I keep reassuring him that Hudson will be just fine and that it will come naturally. I think he is going to be a pretty tough guy feeling how powerful he is when he kicks his momma! Anyway a huge congrats to our sweet friends as they are adjusting to their new life with Julian! So excited for them! |
In our old church, The KingofHearts had a long-standing job for many years of playing Santa at the church Christmas party. It all started shortly after we got married and he was asked to do it. We didn't really know anyone in the ward, but we helped out in the nursery and he knew all the kids' names. He was really great at it and most of the kids walked away from sitting on his lap impressed that he knew them and something about them . It impressed their parents too, but probably in a creepy, shouldn't-you-be-staying-one-hundred-feet-away-from-any-school-or-playground sort of way and not necessarily in the Spirit-of-Christmas kinda way in which it was intended. Now that we go to NewChurch, he hasn't really been asked to fill the roll because they tend to cast it as a "find the fattest guy in the congregation" kinda role, rather than "find a guy who might be good talking to kids." But OldChurch still remembers The KingofHearts, so they called him up this year and a) invited us to their Christmas party so b) he could play Santa. It was actually kind of fun because OldChurch is the melding of two congregations (one we used to attend and the other just south of us geographically) and there were a lot of kids who didn't know him at all. Which means even the kids who used to know him hadn't seen him in awhile so most didn't recognize him and weren't quite sure if this dude was the really real Santa or not. There appeared to be a lack of personal space inherent in the queue. Of course, The Dormouse was there to dash everyone's hopes to the ground. "Hi Dad." "I'm Santa." "Right. Hi Dad." "You know what? Don't annoy Santa." The Caterpillar didn't care and was just happy to be included. We know there's no chance they won't recognize Daddy, so we gave them the Daddy's helping Santa so let's not ruin the fun for the other kids schtick. "Can you tell Santa I want a toy puppy?" "I love you DaddyClaus." Bringing Daddy Claus cookies because he missed dessert. Santa made The Bishop sit on his lap and then gave him a present he wasn't expecting. I love this picture because it's one of the few times I've seen this man laugh. But my favorite part was sitting off to the side of the stage and watching the little kids lose all composure. I knew if I waited long enough, I'd have a photo worthy of This might be my favorite holiday memory ever. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. |
It's mine! All mine. I won this lovely piece of stitched heaven from Karen Ruane! Delicate embroidery on thick paper creates a wonderful confection, reminding me of wedding cakes and candy frosting that crunches when chewed, but slowly melts into a layer of sweetness if you let it sit upon your tongue. Karen creates beautiful embroideries on fabrics, on paper, and even blends the two surfaces for a unique result. I always feel refreshed after drooling over her white works. You can see more of her creations Thanks so much Karen for sharing your work with me. I love my little square. It's mine! I'm so lucky! I hope your day has luck and beauty in it. My house guest arrives this afternoon, so I'll be offline for a few days. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. |
(click on the chart for a sharper image) It does not matter whether you look at seasonally adjusted or non-seasonally adjusted data, mortgage approvals in February are down relative to last year. The seasonally adjusted data is down 37 percent, while the non seasonally adjusted number is down about 33 percent. Nevertheless, I thought it useful to plot both series just in case there was any confusion amount the calamitous decline in mortgage availability. Remember the golden rule of real estate - credit availability determines house prices. With credit tightening, house prices can only fall. |
I am the authentically funky soul today. No earthly delights seem to be working on this funk that goes way down to the soul day. Perhaps it's the clouds, perhaps it's the temperature, perhaps it's just a day to remember so I can rejoice on a happy soul day. Funky is a cool word. You think of Funky Chicken and you smile.You hear a funky tune and it makes you move and if your soul feels in a funk you try to protect yourself a bit. I fit into that last category so I'm listening to Mozart cos I'm a little too sensitive for words at the moment. I'm working up at VAM( my favorite place on earth), hand embroidering,(my favorite thing to do) and listening to all kinds of music which usually rocks my world and soothes my savage beastly soul. But today nothing is really doing it, not even Aretha Franklin. So I'm gonna spare you the rest of the funkiness and hopefully tomorrow will be a happy soul day. And if it turns out to be a universally funky day for you too, please comment so I know my funky little soul isn't alone. |
A few months ago I had only the occasional Ikea catalogue to look forward to when I collected the mail...things have certainly changed since I started blogging! I thought that generosity was non-existant, that people had stopped being thoughtful and that greed had taken over the world but ALAS! I am proven wrong again and again. I have received the most wonderful things in the mail these last few months from people who I now call friends, generous, thoughtful and talented people with an interest in spreading some magic! These are pictures of the lovely treats I have received this week...Thankyou |
Brazil has been no stranger to monetary intervention and currency devaluation, but, until now the political rhetoric has been rather passive on this subject. The tone changed a bit after Brazils finance minister Guido Mantega declared this week that his country will no longer "play the fool" and let its currency appreciate while richer nations gain economic advantage by devaluing theirs. As a result the government extended this Monday a tax on foreign loans to 6% (similar to the Robin-Hood tax that the European Union is planning to implement). Will this coll down the hot money inflows ? After the September 2008 debacle, the real has been on a constant appreciation against the dollar, from a low of around $0.4 to a high of $0.64 in July 20011. It is now trading at $0.558 and the government is planning to adopt measures that would fix the value of the real to a relatively narrow band. The five-year Brazilian real / US dollar from Bloomberg: The main policies that the government might adopt would be to impose higher levies on foreign capital inflows (or capital controls) which would limit the demand of currency. and to pursue more easing policies. The problem here is that companies can ingenuously work around these capital controls by using local subsidiaries to do their bond investments. Furthermore, meddling with the interest rates could open up the cage of the inflation monster, and the rich history of South American inflationary recessions serves as warning in this matter. All in all, the global situation starts to resemble a massive corporate price war which will probably be one by the state which will print the most without actually unleashing the money into the real economy (i.e. without generating too much asset inflation and consumer inflation). Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2012 |
Apparently the NHL handles supplemental discipline in this tournament (as well as goal replays). Its my opinion that they will come down on Thrower, judging on how they have handled things this season. I'm concerned with Leier: short term & long term as well. That kid is a huge part of this team, and will be next season as well. Other highlights from the 1st were: Pouliot's stick work - there were 2 or 3 noticeable instances where the play was headed towards the 'Hawks end and #51 stuck his stick out and picked off the puck, and BAM the play was headed the other way. Looked really good with his stick position in the period to me. One of the biggest plays in the entire game was the save Carruth made on the Stransky breakaway. I'm a glass-half-full guy, and often times if a goalie is struggling and/or the shooter is hot I'm especially optimistic of our goalie making the save. That being said, I wasn't all that sure on this one, until Carruth came up victorious on this play. That's a huge momentum play, as well as confidence - as all goalies have struggled in this tournament. One thing that was fun was when Ferland took Iverson into the camera well between the benches: The smile on Iverson's face was great - as well as him touching on it during a mid-game interview. How 'bout that Pouilot goal: was it soft? He just threw a wrister on net, as both teams were changing. I felt he was rewarded for his good play over the game. Powerplays were a big part of the 2nd. The two that stand out were the 5-on-3 that the Blades had & the double minor on Ferland. The first penalty was on Pouliot, for taking a guy into the crossbar behind Carruth. The Blades were trying extra hard to get into Carruth's kitchen all night, and the defense corps had to clean up extra garbage because of it. I'm not sold that Pouliot's X-check was worth 2 minutes, but I'd feel pretty good if it was - I've got no problem with taking a penalty to help establish your goalies crease - especially from a guy who plays his position like Pouliot does. Then Taylor Peters took a high sticking penalty. The replay looked bad: the puck was head high, he swung his stick at it and whacked a dude. I've heard some in house accounts that the puck hit the other guy in the face, rather than #25's stick, but you can't get your stick in the vicinity of anyone's face and think you're in the clear. This is a huge issue, now that you have one of your top 4 defenseman AND your #1 draw man / penalty killing forward in the box for a minute-and-a-half. Petan took the draw, and eventually Rattie took off on a breakaway. That's how the 'Hawks kill penalties - in my mind their PK is the #1 reason for the success they've had all year. Then, after killing off the 2 man short portion, the Blades get a flukey goal: centering pass goes off of Rutowski's stick, and past a screened Carruth. Part of me thinks he should have had that one, but between the screen + deflection, I'm not sure. How many times this year have we seen a 'Hawks powerplay that moves the puck like magic, but has zero sense of urgency to shoot? Its often discussed that you can't just shoot whenever you want, as teams are so good blocking shots & heading the other way (and we saw that too on this PP) - but you have to get some shots AT SOME POINT - which just didn't happen. Four goddamned minutes, like 2 shots got through. Not good enough. Ferland had 10 pim through 2 periods. That ain't good. 1 -1 after 2 periods. The 'Hawks have been a 3rd period team for a few years - many credit that to their conditioning. There were a few moving parts to the DeLeo goal: 'Spooner shot the puck so hard that it knocked the stick clean out of Makarov's hand (at least I'd like to think it did). The rebound ends up behind the net with Bjorkstrand setting up DeLeo out front - with Bittner planted firmly in the slot. DeLeo put that shot right where the goalie's stick would normally be. Bittner ultamitley had little to do with that goal, but I sure liked the look of that big Minnesotan causing a ruck in the slot. I could get used to that. Shortly thereafter there was the Leipsic goal: #leipsnipe. This has been a "blood in the water" team - they get one, they generally get a couple more. This goal felt like that. During intermission rumor broke that Leipsic signed a pro deal. He hadn't done much to this point of the tourney, then buried this goal - which was huge. Rattie with the casual 4th goal - dude acted like he's been there before. Josh Nichols made it interesting with a goal with 3:33 left - good shot, good player, right time to score. Brought the Blades back in it, if only briefly. Its been fun watching the national (Canadian) media get used to Mac Carruth. Things like being the last one off the ice after warm ups, to getting guys faces in scrums, to playing the puck ALL THE TIME, to things like intentionally fanning on the puck as a fake - he's got too much character to get used to in 4 years - let alone 10 days. Buzzing The Net: Leier hit O-live twitter reaction to the Leier hit How was a four-minute penalty kill actually counterproductive for the Blades? In their win, the Blades were buoyed by the combo of a late second period penalty kill and an out-of-the-box breakaway goal by Matej Stransky. It was 1-all with 4:10 left in the second period when Saskatoon overage Michael Ferland got a double minor. Thanks in part to both Brett Stovin blocking "five or six" shots — by his own rough guesstimate — and the puck bouncing on some bad ice, the Winterhawks didn't capitalize. It didn't lift the Blades, though, despite a huge ovation at the end of the period from the announced crowd of 9,239. It took a lot out of them. "It was probably our only positive of the game," Nicholls said. "Unfortunately, the period ended. What we really needed was a good first five minutes of the third period to keep that momentum. We weren't able to do that. We kind of slowed the game down. We have to keep pushing the pace and use our endurance to push teams to the brink." "It took a lot of energy out of us," Blades coach-GM Lorne Molleken added. "We had some mistakes that Portland took advantage of." Friday night should be fun: 1 win away from the Memorial Cup game. I like these odds clean hits don't draw blood |
Will St. John copying Caravaggio's St. John the Baptist winner of the 2011 Alma Schapiro Prize will give a lecture this Friday, October 19th on Learning from the Old Masters in Rome . The fellowship inspired Will to extend his stay in Europe studying and copying paintings at museums including: , The Medici Chapel in the Basilica of San Lorenzo The paintings he copied include two by Caravaggio of St. John the Baptist Will is an alum of the Water Street Atelier and currently teaches our class with fellow Water Street Atelier alum, The deadline for the 2013 Alma Schapiro Prize is fast approaching on November 1st! This three-month fellowship affiliated with The American Academy in Rome is for painters and sculptors with a commitment to the classical tradition and its contemporary practice. The proposed three-month stay must begin between September 2013 and March 2014 and conclude no later than May 31, 2014. To apply you must be a US citizen over the age of 21. Be sure to stop by the Beaux Arts Atelier Exhibition/Open House also on Friday from 6-8pm on the 3rd floor. Work by current students, alumni and faculty as well as from the permanent collection of the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art will be on view. |
When folks see my dark burgundy red-colored yarn, they want to know what I used to dye it. They are then usually surprised when I tell them that the dye material is bugs. But that's really what cochineal is. Cochineal are scale insects that feed upon the prickly pear cactus fruit, which is dark pink. They are collected by hand and dried, and then sold in the form you see below: To make the dye, I boil the bug bodies in several changes of water and strain them out. Once they're boiled, they look like so: The resulting dye bath is dark red. I should be getting a true red from my cochineal when I use the alum mordant, and I'm not totally sure why mine comes out like raspberry sorbet. I'm guessing it must be our water. With its pH, I would expect to get a true red, but there are likely dissolved minerals, which may alter the outcome. One of these days, I'll try it with distilled water or rainwater, and see if I get different results. I have also seen instructions that recommend grinding the cochineal before extraction. I wonder if this would yield more red? I'm not really disappointed though, because this shade of purple-red-raspberry is one of my favorites. |
If David Cronenberg and TREMORS Had a Baby, They’d Name It LITTLE HEAVEN I wouldn’t recommend Nick Cutter’s latest novel as a light read for your lunch hour – unless you want to risk losing your lunch. However, Little Heaven is a must-read novel if you – A) Think Cormac McCarthy’s novel (and/or the Coen brothers movie) No Country for Old Men needed more blood, some monsters, and a bit of Cronenbergian body horror to really qualify as a classic. Here’s a sample from page four: In the darkness, something shambled from the den. The moon touched upon its strange extrusions, its flesh shining wetly in the pale moonlight. It breathed through many mouths and gazed through a cluster of eyes lodged in a knot of fatted, blood-streaked fur. The story in Little Heaven alternates between “present day” (1980) and events in 1965 that bring a trio of mismatched criminals together. Micah Shughrue, Minerva Atwater, and Ebenezer Elkins are joined together by circumstance and on the run from the law. At Micah’s urging, the trio agrees to help Ellen Bellhaven in her quest to check on the wellbeing of her nephew Nate. Her sister’s ex took the boy to a remote religious community in New Mexico called Little Heaven, led by the weirdly charismatic Reverend Amos Flesher. Once the group arrives at the ramshackle settlement, they discover Little Heaven resembles a fundamentalist Hotel California; you can check out any time you like, but something in the woods won’t let you leave. Revered Flesher thought he heard the voice of God calling him to this corner of the Land of Enchantment. By the end of Little Heaven, it seems much more likely he heard the call of Cthulhu (or one of his relatives). If there’s any issue I had as a reader with Little Heaven, it was more of pacing than quibbles with content or story. The initial sections introduce us to the 1980 versions of Micah, Minerva, and Ebenzer, and then flash back to the events that brought them together. While these sections are interesting, I found myself wondering – when are we getting to the main story? The excerpt at the beginning of this review clues you in to where Little Heaven lies on the horror spectrum. But while it has plenty of gut churning moments, it is not “torture porn.” Like the best splatterpunk in this books’ ancestry, the violence is not an end in itself, with forgettable characters dying in gruesome ways just to gross out the reader. Even the worst miscreant (cough Reverend Amos cough) remains a person, not a prop. The National Post’s review of Cutter’s first horror novel The Troop mentioned a feature of that book that makes his books “must reads” for me. “It highlights the organic inevitability of the best horror fiction while never being predictable.” Little Heaven – the little town you can’t forget, and a book worth any horror fan’s time. |
Bloom, Ixorus, IX, Cadent, Striping, Auraknot, Betweed, Paradox, Cubine, ,Jester These two bookmarks are Christmas surprise gifts for two friends here at our park in Florida. They got hung in a little Christmas bag on their door knob this morning. I used some of most favorite tangles. I am never totally comfortable with "Betweed". Somehow it is elusive to me. But I like it and I like the way others use it so elegantly so I am going to keep trying it. I love "Bloom" with the dark background and I have not used "Ixorus" for a long time and I'd forgotten how much I love that one. Kind of a funky "Paradox" this time too. All in all about an hour's work of delightful pleasure last night before I turned in. I know Barb and Alex will enjoy them as they are both avid readers. It is warm and humid here in central Florida on Christmas eve day...it says 70 on the thermometer but feels warmer (overcast). I've been puttering with last minute Christmas cooking in the kitchen, cleaning bathrooms, etc as one does before guests arrive. Christmas eve service is at 5 at our church and when we get back the whole park with be filled with candle- lit luminaries. It is magical. (A neighbor lights ours for us.) In many ways I love Christmas Eve more than Christmas Day. Once you are past the presents thing, you figure it out. Merry Christmas. |
It's approaching rainy season in Indonesia. Makin mendekati musim hujan! It is the first year for me to have a (potted) garden and I am excited to pass this challenging season well really. I am sure I will learn something new. Thanks to the weather :) Baru tahun ini saya punya kebun dalam pot dan saya tertantang juga untuk melewati musim hujan kali ini dengan baik. Pasti saya akan dapat pelajaran baru tentang berkebun yah. Terima kasih musim hujan! :) If you want to share your experience gardening during the rainy season, please feel free to leave your comment and let's learn together. Kalau teman-teman ingin berbagi pengalaman berkebun di musim hujan, boleh banget loh meninggalkan pesan dan mari kita belajar bersama. By the way, check out some of inspiration for your potted garden. If you don't have a potted garden yet, I recommend you to try one. It is fun! :) Omong-omong, simak beberapa inspirasi kebun dalam pot berikut. Jika teman-teman belum punya kebun dalam pot, saya sarankan untuk mencobanya. Seru deh! :) I love the idea of re-defining a tea pot. It's cute and elegant at the same time. Saya suka ide mengalihkan fungsi poci teh ini menjadi pot. Imut dan elegan. How about reusing old flour sifter? Bagaimana kalau ayak tepung usang dijadikan pot? .. or creating a mini vertical garden of pastel pots on your fence .. atau menciptakan taman vertikal mini dengan pot berwarna pastel di pagar .. turn cracked mug or bowl into pots. .. gunakan mug atau mangkok retak sebagai pot anything can be planters! It's so eco-friendly! :) .. apapun bisa dijadikan pot. Jadi kita tetap ramah lingkungan! :) ..pots from old boots .. pot dari sepatu bekas .. create more garden space on the wall! I super like this idea. .. ciptakan lebih ruang tambahan untuk berkebun dengan menggunakan dinding! Saya suka sekali ide ini. And lastly, pots made of formula cans. I like that they are painted to prevent them from being rusted. .. Dan akhirnya, pot dari kaleng susu bekas yang dicat agar tidak karatan. I hope you are inspired to utilize anything at home for your garden. Let's create something out of anything we have at the moment now. Semoga teman-teman terinspirasi untuk menggunakan apapun yang ada di rumah untuk berkebun. Mari kita menciptakan sesuatu dengan apapun yang kita punya saat ini :) PS: the pictures are gathered from various blogs. Too bad I didn't save the links. I will try to save my reference next time :) |
I remember 6th grade camp so long ago, I remember the feeling of this was the last fun thing I get to do in elementary school. I remember the excitement and the bus ride, the friends and the activities. However, today I got to witness that anticipation of Alex heading off to 5th grade camp (in Mukilteo 6th grade is in middle school). As "cool" as he was acting about having to go camping I could tell there was some excitment there. It's hard to believe how old he is getting. His teacher told me last week that "He entered 5th grade as a boy and he is leaving a man" such a sad fact. The other sad fact that I am finding very difficult to accept is that Alex has a "girlfriend"... don't worry, I asked him what that meant and so far it doesn't mean kissing or holding hands, it just means that they like each other. When did he get to that stage? I made him point her out to me this morning when I dropped him off, and I had to refrain from saying anything to her especially since I promised not to embarrased him. Alex is now my height, again, when did all this happen??? I have really started to cherish the moments I have with him, as he reminds me, he will be driving in 4 1/2 years (AAHHH). He is such a great kid, it's just hard to accept that he is growing. I am very proud at how we all have pitched in and raised him, I get so many comments about how well mannered he is. As you can probably tell Alex has only been gone for a few hours and I miss him so much, I am looking foward to having him come home on friday- the wierd part about missing him is that he is gone all the time to grandma's for a week, to his dad's once a week and so on and yet I have never missed him more than I do now. I guess it is finally hitting me that the little red headed boy I used to carry around is now a young man with friends, and girlfriends, and a social life. I just dread the day he asks to go hang out at the mall.... |
Who wrote this book and when?
Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus published this book in 2002. Has there been a film version?
Yes, starring Scarlett Johansson and Laura Linney. I’m pretty sure it’s a little different from the book, however. Who are the important characters?
Nan – the narrator and nanny
Mrs. X – her boss, a self-absorbed rich trophy wife
Grayer X – Nan’s little charge, a boy who wants to be loved by his parents but is used to being passed from caregiver to caregiver
H.H. – the good-looking Harvard student Nan finds herself attracted to
Ms. Chicago – the woman Mr. X is having an affair with What’s it about?
It tells the story of Nan’s job for the X’s, a very wealthy New York family with one son. Nan finds herself becoming less and less a simple nanny and more and more the gopher for Mrs. X, the secret keeper for Mr. X, and both mom and dad to Grayer. Why is this book a classic/bestseller?
It’s a bestseller because it’s supposed to fit in with the rest of the Bridget Jones/Shopoholic chick literature genre. Do I recommend you read this book?
No. How did this book make my list?
I’m not exactly sure. Has it won any awards?
Nope. It did hit number 1 on the New York Times Bestseller List, though. Favorite quotes:
Sorry, nothing. I went into this novel a tad bit excited. I needed kind of a chick lit break, and have heard great things about the humor in this novel. I was vastly disappointed. Instead of being funny, the narrator comes off as bitter. I wasn’t humored by her situation, only saddened. When she was making fun of the upper class I was just feeling sorry for them. It’s horrible that people actually treat their children this way and it made me feel horrible for being obligated to think it was funny. The entire love story was a little muddled and seemed randomly tossed in for the sake of keeping the attention of the chick lit-ers, but it all ended very suddenly and with no real resolution. Like I said, I was disappointed. |
I know its a little late this time around, but wanted to fit my Cornwall trip in first. This months Pic of the Month is going to one of favourite birds the Nuthatch, although I haven't seen it since this visit so glad I was ready for it. to everyone who took the time to leave comments and visit this month. |
Thursday night was definitely not a good night for Team DIY member Tommaso Ciampa. The former NXT Tag Team Champion competed against Sanity in a tag team match at the NXT live event in Highland Heights, KY, and the match had to be stopped after Ciampa took a dive off the apron to the outside. After the match was stopped, Ciampa was taken to the back and fans feared the worst. It’s never good when a match has to be stopped, and it’s definitely not good when the person who suffers a possible injury is set to compete in a NXT Tag Team Title match at NXT TakeOver: Chicago. Luckily it looks like Tommaso Ciampa will be able to compete in the match. Triple H held a NXT media conference call today and he said that Ciampa turned his ankle at the event, so the match was stopped as a precaution. Tommaso Ciampa was x-rayed and it was determined that there was no serious damage and he only sprained his ankle. He went on to say that he texted with Ciampa and Ciampa confirmed he’s up and moving around today. He’s set to be checked on once again tomorrow, and as of right now the NXT Tag Team Title ladder match is still on. |
Hello, and welcome to the School Help Advice Reporting Page System. We all work together at Overton Grange School to help with any problems you may have in or out of school. If you wish to contact us, you don't have to leave your details if you don't want to. Please take the time to look through the pages and if you feel that you can help to keep our school a safe, challenging and happy community, you can get in touch using the link. This is a CONFIDENTIAL way to stop YOU or a FRIEND or SOMEONE you have seen SUFFERING. |
I manage it to practice, not in the morning, yet during the day. When travelling one must be even a bit more flexible than usual. We relax here in Varna, Bulgaria. We stroll around, we sit in one of the bars close to the beach, we read, we eat, we sleep. When there is nothing to do, then I practice....haha..... The picture was taken yesterday night. I think my kapotasana attempt looks better than years ago. There is still a long way to go. I fear that I must put more energy and time in back bending. Yet this should be doable, too. I know that I haven't yet reach my limits. My practice has changed in the last year: I focus to keep my legs strong and I keep the knees together. I move backwards slowly and I try to create room. Stretching upwards comes first. I move the chest upwards, too. |
And afterwards, organizing their loot, of course... Despite a little drizzly rain, which fortunately brought a much warmer temperature and let the girls go out without coats over their costumes, we did the rounds of our neighborhood for about an hour. Some of the houses were decorated to the max and lots of porches had their lights on. The girls got plenty of candy to keep us all in sweets for several weeks, so they declared the holiday a success. The next morning, I ate a bowl of fun-size candy bars for breakfast and then apparently slipped into a sugar coma and forgot to go to my dentist appointment. How's that for irony?! Pro Tip: never schedule dentist appointments for November 1st. |
One definition of Leadership – Carina J. The following blog was written by a student that attended one of my Leadership Labs. The writing was in response to the question “How would you define leadership?” Leadership isn’t always east. It can normally be hard and tedious work. Leadership is the act of creating, starting, guiding, and finishing a team though a chosen process. You must choose your team based on their abilities. So even if you want all your closest friends on a team it may not work out. Leadership is also knowing to take fault, not to blame it on others. If something goes wrong, it is up to the leader to try their best to fix it. Leadership also is listening to your teams ideas first. Leadership is pushing your team in the right direction without threats or bribery. Sometimes you will need to remove or swap out a person on your team, for a good reason. Leadership is sharing a laugh with your team. It is enabling each person on your team to reach their goal. It is up to you to be forgiving to mistakes. Leadership is a lot of trusts. It knows you and your team can do what’s needed. Leadership is allowing help from outside resources if needed. Leadership is being an example to people in your team and others seeing your teams work. Leadership is SERVING your team, treating them better than you. Leadership is being open to anything. This is leadership.
– Carina J. |
About a year ago, it was raining SUPER hard one night. About three a.m. I had a really strong feeling (or as I like to call it a prompting) to go outside and look at the front corner of my house. I grabbed a flashlight and an umbrella and trudged out into the downpour wondering why I would be having that feeling at such a time. I went right to that corner of my house and saw sheets of rain coming off the roof there and my rain gutters were being pushed away from the house and there was a section of about four feet that were at least a foot away from the house. I love my Heavenly Father who gives me promptings or tells my guardian angels to work out the situation as I needed to know that there was a problem in that corner of the house. There were just little signs here and there that a small amount of water was getting into the corner wall of the house. I had the roof done several years back and I kept seeing little drips in the basement window frame showing that some water had gotten into the frame / wall. I live in a fairly dry state and even if it did leak, it would evaporate quickly so it was more of a mystery where the water was coming from than a worry about it as there was never enough to do anything with it. I had more insulation put into my attic a few years back and with that, when it would rain, it would creak more. I think a small amount of water was getting in and wetting the insulation and then make the insulation heavy causing it to creek. When I hammered the gutters back into the house, I didn't get them under the little metal edge and I had many times over the years cleaned them out trying to seal the joints with different methods and couldn't quite get them to stop leaking at the joints. The people who sold me the house put them up themselves and there were many bent nails. I had the trees near the house and needed to prune them before getting new gutters so I postponed them going up until I was able to finish the trees. As you can see by my post a few days ago, they are now pruned. I was able to climb on the roof and kick down some of the gutters and was able to pull down the rest so I could get new ones put up. I saved a few hundred dollars by taking them down myself. I also hired someone to redo the gable flashing and apparently, the roofers did the East gable right and the West gable wrong and unfortunately, the West is where most of the storms hit my home so each time it would rain REALLY hard, some water would seep down under the roof shingles and drip a bit in the basement window! It also explained the sheet of water during that super storm a year or so ago. Yea for figuring out that mystery and getting it fixed! It will be nice to have seamless gutters! Have a blessed day! |
I think I got this recipe from a Pampered Chef party many years ago. I only used one package of crescent rolls because my kids are being picky and I knew they wouldn't eat very much of it. Usually I use 2 packages and the ring is twice as big. Oh well, this is the basic idea anyway. Take 1 package of Pilsbury cresent rolls, remove from package, and separate the pieces. Then lay them out on a baking stone so that the points face outward. Top with refried beans, pre-cooked ground beef, and grated cheddar cheese. Fold the dough over and seal. Bake at 375 for 12 minutes until golden brown. I serve this with shredded lettuce, tomatoes, salsa, and sour cream. Whatever you usually put on a taco works. When I am feeding adults and don't have picky children that cry about sour cream, I take the sour cream and put it in a tube with a fluted end, and squeeze a pretty dollop onto each section of the cresent so it has little white "flowers" all around the ring. But since I had lots of picky crying children tonight, I made it extra plain and we just added what we wanted afterwards. |
I've been AWOL from the blogosphere for the last few days, but I haven't been slacking off (too much). I'm still ploughing away at my November goals. I'm managing to track everything and get more activity, but I am almost positive that the "lose 8 pounds" goal is not going to happen. On the upside, I weighed in 2 pounds lighter this week. I don't have an official weight to report because I am currently trying out a new product called . I'll be posting a review in the next few days, so check out the product website and stay tuned for my two cents. The bad news? My calico sweetheart, Samantha isn't doing so hot on her diet. Despite our best efforts which included eliminating table scraps and canned food as well as purchasing a laser pointer to encourage activity, she is up .20 pounds from last year. For your Tuesday viewing pleasure I submit the following image. Take a look at 14.8 pounds of feline in an artificial Christmas tree! Happy Tuesday! |
Ivy Tech Community College Northeast providing a healthy, comfortable and productive environment for the students, faculty and staff of this campus. In light of various findings through research on first-hand and second-hand smoke, Ivy Tech Northeast is entirely tobacco and smoke-free. The use or sale of any tobacco product is prohibited on college-owned, operated, or leased property or vehicles at any time. The policy applied to all Ivy Tech Northeast facilities and grounds, regardless of location. Smoking, including the use of an e-cigarette, shall not be permitted in any enclosed space and is also prohibited outdoors on all college campus property, including parking lots. This policy applies to all students, faculty, staff and visitors. Copies of this policy shall be distributed to all faculty and staff and shall be included with information given to all admitted/new students. Appropriate signage noting the policy shall be posted at all points of entry to the college campus and at all college building entrances. On-site smoking cessation programs shall be made available periodically each year to assist and encourage individuals who wish to quit smoking.
There are nicotine replacement and smoking cessation programs available to benefits-eligible employees. See details on the Employee Services tab of Campus Connect under Wellness. Questions and problems regarding the policy should be handled through existing departmental administrative channels and administrative procedures. The success of this policy will depend on the thoughtfulness, consideration and cooperation of smokers and nonsmokers. If you see someone violating the policy, please remind the individual. All students, faculty and staff share in the responsibility of adhering to and enforcing the policy. Violations of the policy will be treated in accordance with general campus disciplinary procedures. Enforcement of the Policy |
Oliver and Larry love bonding time no matter what they are doing. This is day one....Oliver and daddy snoozing on the couch after reading a bedtime story. Day two...asleep again! I wonder who falls asleep first??? Three days in a row. I think this picture captures the truth. Oliver must put Larry to sleep!!! Oliver has been very interested in pillows lately. He, of course, doesn't have one in his bed, but is very attached to them while he has quiet time before bedtime. This specific pillow is one that Grammy sent in his Valentine's Day box! As you can tell, he surely is attached to it! |
The news in the Telegraph that Twitter users are "invited to help choose the new Archbishop of Canterbury" has already produced this interesting response from an alert member of the Church in Wales where their Archbishop has long since been keen to advance his Arch-Liberal credentials: Timothy William Ivor Thomas reports a conversation recently overheard at Eglwys Dewi Sant, Cardiff. A friend of the assistant bishop has it on very good authority from a personage close to the archbishop’s press office that His Grace intends to make two controversial announcements in his presidential address at next month’s Governing Body meeting. (The same credible source was responsible for the story about His Grace’s desperate but alas, unsuccessful, attempt to persuade the Occupy Cardiff protest to set up camp in his cathedral.)
His Grace intends to put the considerable weight of his Bench of Bishops behind support for gay marriage. All Welsh churches are to be made available for gay marriage ceremonies. So as not to be seen as introducing this measure by the back door, the Bench has already drawn up a gay marriage service for Wales.
David Cameron’s cousin, Bishop Gregory, has hinted that if His Grace is seen by the Prime Minister to be actively promoting in Wales Conservative Big Society policy, his reward may come in a well-placed nomination for a certain job going in Canterbury at the end of the year. That will clear the path for Gregory’s translation to head bishop in Wales. However, not to miss out on a sniff of promotion to the top job in Wales, John Swansea and Brecon
has been doing his bit to champion gay marriage in Wales. “I can’t see what the all the fuss is about,” commented Bishop John. He continued, “A careful reading of scripture clearly shows that Jesus supported gay marriage. In fact his water into wine stunt was actually performed at a gay wedding. If you look at the text in the original Greek, it doesn’t say ‘bride and groom’, but rather ‘Bridey and Groom’. Bridey is a clear reference to the far distant relative of Lord Brideshead. Groom was an ancestor of Simon Groom of Blue Peter fame. So Jesus was at the wedding of two chaps Bridey and Groom. What’s the problem? If Jesus is OK with gay marriage, then so am I.”
Secondly His Grace will introduce the idea of lay presidency in Wales. The recent Harries Commission has noted that across the whole of Wales on average only about 30 people attend each church for about an hour on each Sunday. That means in a given week for six days and twenty-three hours the buildings are empty. Lord Harries noted, "The concept of the priesthood is not founded on Biblical tradition. The New Testament describes the role of the bishop and deacon, but nowhere does it mention priests. So do we really need them now? When the church is strapped for cash we must ask whether we can justify employing someone in the role of priest for one hour per week to behave like a Tesco’s check out girl dispensing the ‘Lucky Jesus wafers’? We have to ask ourselves whether all this couldn’t be done by someone from the laity.” The archbishop hopes that by making lay presidency appointments in the parishes it will free up more opportunities for his priests to sit on a number of new diocesan and provincial commissions which will look at why fewer people are attending church these days.
Further support for Archbishop Barry’s campaign to move to Lambeth Palace has come from Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow. Continuing the ‘kaleidoscope country’ theme he developed in his loyal address to the Queen as part of her Diamond Jubilee celebrations, Speaker Bercow said, “Barry Morgan is a kaleidoscope archbishop of a kaleidoscope church in a kaleidoscope country. His kaleidoscope credentials are inclusively impeccable, and he would be the ideal candidate to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. I look forward to welcoming him to the palace of Westminster when he takes his seat in the House of Lords.” With support like that the appointment is a done deal. |
It has been a lovely sunny weekend, dry warm (after the early morning chill has gone) and a great time to be out admiring our countryside. However, I have chosen to spend most of it in a stuffy overheated hall in York at the Lib Dem Spring Conference. As ever, Conference gives me a chance to meet fellow Lib Dem members from around the country, including some who I have spent years talking to on line but never met in person, and to recharge my enthusiasm for working to promote the Lib Dems here in Bassetlaw. The highlight as ever was ever Tim Farron’s speech to close the Conference. He was funny, inspiring, challenging but above all, passionate in his liberal vision for the United Kingdom (you watch it here, Tim’s speech starts at 3:13:00, or you can read the transcript). He reiterated that it is only the Liberal Democrats that stand up for ordinary people, reminding everyone that Lib Dems “stand for election, not to be someone, but to do something!” If you want to do something for your community, then come and join us, you can do that here. The main role of Conference is to make policy for the Party and on three issues, what we decided in York has a direct bearing on the people of Bassetlaw. These issues are Fracking the regulation of Cannabis and protecting tenants of Private Landlords (full details in the Agenda are on line) Obviously, there was much more at Conference than these three debates, training sessions, fringe events, even an unscheduled trip to A&E to support a young member who had damaged their knee falling down the steps at the Barbican Centre (and no, no drink was involved) but these three debates show that Lib Dems, far from being a spent force, are looking at how we can put people before vested interests, how we can make a difference rather than just hold office, how we can help build communities not just protect self-interests. Conference for us is all about putting flesh on to the dry bones of our principles and our weekend in York did not disappoint. |
I have a very good appetite. As in my previous entry, I still have big appetite. It has been several times that the waitress at the restaurant showed 'amazed' facial expression when I asked for more rice in my plate. (Well, it's unusual, esp. for a thin person like me). Sham on the other hand, has never showed any expression, even when he realized I eat more than I used to. When I asked him whether he has anything to say about that, he'll simply say..."It's okay. U need the energy." ...and the answer made me blushed. Hehehe. Yet, that doesn't stop me from nibbling and munching between mealtimes. Adam's appetite? I once tried soaking the baby’s rusks in water, but the way Adam eat it, I can tell- it was bland! Even if it is orange-flavoured or so, he'll spit it out. (perhaps he doesn't like artificial flavourings!) Thankfully, it didn't take me too long to realize he was interested in trying other things. Soon, Adam was gobbling down various fruits like papayas, honey dews, pears and apples and just the other day I decided to let him try dragon fruits. I might not be a great cook, but at least I know how to puree like a pro (and am quite keen on the papayas and pumpkin). Sue didn't encourage me to prepare vege for him, as his cereal is already stuffed with carrots and such. With the healthy appetite, he is strong enough to get on with the work at hand. There are places to go and things to learn and he just can't keep still. And I have to burn the calories I got from the food I ate to chase and grab him before he falls down. |
It is Wednesday, so it´s time for the Wishcasting Wednesday post. Today Jamie asked: HOW DO YOU WISH TO SOAR? To read what other wishers had to say, I wish to soar by creating. I wish to finally get my act together and put paint/pencil/marker to journal. I have BIG plans for 2011. :) Talking about creating: today I finished The Sound of Paper, starting from scratch by Julia Cameron. It took me three months and a half, working on a prompt each day from Monday to Friday. Some chapters took longer as I bumped into a resistance wall, specially those talking nicely about myself (yea, I know, hangs head) or asking for things (ditto). I wrote the exercises in a pretty school folder and my Morning (usually afternoon or even evening, if a t all) Pages in a cute A4 notebook that I had around. More news: I won a copy of the Cloth Paper Scissors Gift at Kathryn´s site Collage Diva give away. When I first saw the cover my reaction was a happy squeal. As in "Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!" giggle It was such a happy looking magazine, with tons of pretty things to try out. And I have already told you about having plans for creating in the near future. :) Thank you Kathryn! :) December 15 – 5 Minutes Imagine you will completely lose your memory of 2010 in five minutes. Set an alarm for five minutes and capture the things you most want to remember about 2010. (Author: Patti Digh) I already wrote about this on December 10th when I chose one moment per month for the What made you happy? prompt from The Happy Book, part of The Next Chapter book club led by Jamie Ridler. Watermelon as dessert for dinner. P.S: yes, I cheated a bit and wrote most of this on Thursday and added to the Wednesday post. You know I neeeeeeeeeeeeed my posts in order. ;) |
I had an eventful weekend, so to keep gentle readers amused whilst I catch up, here's a bean poll. My pole beans have been behaving very strangely this year, none more so than this sprout emulating the St. Louis . It's been like that for five weeks. The stem gets thicker and thicker (see a normal stem in the background), but it doesn't lift its head out of the ground. DH thinks I should "help" it. I'm inclined to wait and see what it will do on its own. What do you think? My first tomato suffered a setback. It's almost ripe now, and that has not escaped notice. Dang birds. Ah well, The Arch frames the Old Courthouse, where the Dred Scott case was heard before going to the U.S. Supreme Court, 150 years ago. |
The two candidates fielded by the Janata Dal (United) for the Rajya Sabha by-polls in Bihar won the elections with support from Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, leaving behind the two independent candidates who were reported to have been backed by the Bharatiya Janata Party. The third seat was won by JD (U) President Sharad Yadav without opposition. Earlier this week, Janata Dal (U) chief Nitish Kumar had reached out to Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, asking him to support the two JDU (U) nominees with the aim of ensuring the Bharatiya Janata Party's defeat in the Rajya Sabha by-election. Yadav had later agreed to lend support. The by-election to the Upper House of the Parliament was held on Thursday, and the two JD (U) candidates, Pawan Varma and Gulam Rasool Balyawi defeated Independent candidates Anil Sharma and Sabir Ali, reported Press Trust of India. Varma reportedly garnered 122 votes to defeat Sharma, who got 108, while Balwayi won 123 votes against Ali's 107, Assembly Secretary Hareram Mukhiya was quoted as saying. It was clear that there was cross-voting in the by-poll, as the two Independent candidates are reported to have received votes from defectors from JD (U), RJD as well as the Congress. As per the PTI report, Sharma and Ali got 17 and 16 votes respectively from dissidents of the other parties. JD (U) state President Basistha Narayan Singh said that the party would take action against those who went against it. While Nitish Kumar may be reveling in the victory, he had to earlier face strong ridicule for his move of approaching Lalu Prasad Yadav for support, especially from the BJP. "Nitish Kumar has lost it politically despite winning the bypoll, for which he had to align with RJD supremo Lalu Prasad, who symbolised 'jungle raj' in Bihar," Senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi was quoted as saying. The Independent candidates also attacked Kumar for his move. "Nitish had to crawl to Lalu Prasad for victory of two JD(U) candidates," Ali said. A total of 230 MLAs out of an effective strength of 232 in the Assembly took part in the voting. |
Dr M: We are having a little problem with PKR PUTRAJAYA: Pakatan Harapan chairman Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (pic) admits that the Opposition is having some problems with PKR due to its uncertain stance regarding cooperation with PAS in the coming polls. "We are having a little problem with PKR because Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has openly said they should continue to speak with PAS," he said during a town hall session held at Perdana Leadership Foundation office here. Anwar is the PKR adviser as well as the coalition's de facto leader. Dr Mahathir was responding to a question by a participant on why PKR was sending mixed messages to the public in terms of its stance over cooperation with the Islamist party. The 92-year-old stressed that the Opposition coalition had collectively decided not to collaborate with PAS. An extra party in the coalition would only make seat negotiations even harder, explained Dr Mahathir. "If we accept PAS in the group, there will be five parties and they will insist to contest all of their previous seats. Not just the ones they have won. "Then, there will no more seats left for others," he said. On Saturday, Anwar admitted to endorsing talks between his party and PAS about working together in the elections despite the Pakatan presidential council's announcement last week not to cooperate with the Islamist party. Subsequently, PKR deputy president Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali reportedly said he felt vindicated after being criticised for holding informal talks over an alliance with PAS. Meanwhile, the former premier also admitted that the country's revenue was lower during his 22-year tenure compared to the country's revenue now. "But yet, we were able to do a lot of things. During my time, companies were not making much money, but they are now. "So when they make billions in profit now, 26% of it belongs to the Government. "So the Government should have more money now compared to my time. Why is it that there's so much funds available but the Government says there's no money and has to impose GST?" he asked. MAIN SPONSOR : Online Casino Malaysia, 88GASIA |
Gotta luv that yarn! But here's a tip. A tip that should be kept in mind for all long self-striping yarns: Don't use it doubled from the inside AND outside at the same time. That causes the color pattern be in the opposite order: red - orange - yellow vs. yellow - orange - red. Putting those two together (doubled) can you imagine what's going to happen? Solution is easy: Divide your ball and make sure both strands are changing color in the same pattern or direction: Red to Orange, and Yellow to Green. I didn't think that far ahead, and it has been worrying me for months--the months that I haven't been knitting on this project. Looks tremendous, IMHO, but in the back of my mind I've been running through the colors and imagining what's next. And my fear is that I'll have the same color doubled up. Look at this: I start with (think rainbow) strand 1: Blue Purple Red Orange Yellow Green; Strand 2: Green Yellow Orange Red Purple. They line up like this: ....Yellow-Purple etc. Since the color change is so subtle, I know I'll have red-red or orange-orange in between my color changes, and I can't stand that much red and orange in the middle of my scarf. OK, let's hear it... just shorten one of the colors, you say. And I tell you, that would be fine if I discovered the enormity of the problem before I got to Red-Orange above. Once I was knitting with Red-Orange I couldn't shorten the red because it would still run into the orange of the 2nd strand, and the same goes with shortening the orange to red. But... My motto: Divide and Conquer! Divide (cut that yarn), roll up yards of red and orange, cut again, and reattach the yarns Now I expect the order to go retrograde. Blue-Green, Purple-Yellow, The only thing I'm losing is the two sides will never have the same pattern. Each side will be unique, and THAT I call " I removed 27 g from the 160g ball and all is right in the Kauni world. Hope the news gets out and prevents at least one other person from gnashing their teeth. Somewhere out there, someone SHOULD do the calculations for where you can start as I did and using the right combination not have the same colors meet. Here's a quick attempt: Red - Orange - Yellow - Green - Blue - Purple - Red AND Green - Yellow - Orange - (no same thing happens)... Blue - Green - Yellow - (no)... I don't think it can be done. Contest time! I have a ball of Kauni to give away... Send me your combination of colors where the six colors follow each other in the cause the two colors to repeat themselves (as mine did) or the same color to occur at the same time. Good luck! |
A round up of the busyness of the past couple of days and some random observations of the USofA. July 4 – wow! It seemed like half of San Francisco and a good many visitors went down to the bay for the fireworks. The whole length of the Fisherman’s Wharf area was packed and it had a real carnival feel to it, with street food vendors and balloons and sparkly headgear all over the place. The fireworks were great, heavily featuring red and blue, naturally (plus we got to see Oakland’s show across the bay for good measure). We were very fortunate with the weather that night and actually for the whole stay there. Disneyland. Well. Just watch this: Americans (including Mickey Mouse) really are friendly, just like everyone says. And many have been super impressed that we’ve come such a long way just to see their country. I am not a fan of the so-called cheese that gets put on many fast foods here. Cheese is not meant to be that colour or consistency. But the B&B we’re staying at in New Orleans had some very nice real cheese they served up on Saturday evening, so clearly the country does know how to do it right. |
Hey ya'll! I know I listed my but I wanted to break my goals down by month too. So here are my even though we are a little over a week into the month. Anyone else impressed that I am 4 for 4 so far this week with post? I am even shocking myself! I even know what I am going to post about tomorrow, so I will be 5 for 5! I am doing the advocare 24 day cleanse starting Monday (Jan. 11) I want to actually 100% commit to it and see what kind of results I will get from it. I am planning on documenting it, so be prepared to see those post next week. I want to create a homework out plan. We almost have entire gym in my house and I don't use it. I really need to start to truly get where I want to be in the near future as swimsuit season is almost here. I know this was a 2016 goal, but I need to catch up from 2015 to make sure 2016 doesn't start lacking behind too. I am going to make a work schedule like as if I was in an office. I am thinking of making my working hours from 10-4 Tuesday and Wednesdays and Friday will be 9-3 so I will have time to do stuff before the weekend starts. I am taking suggestions for a good book to read. I have an app so I can borrow books from the library and or I am willing to purchase them on my kindle, I just need something interesting to read that I look forward too. I want to read 1 book this month. Make sure the Christmas Stuff gets put away If I don't put this on the to do list, the Christmas stuff will sit around until next year. It's all sitting in a room currently we rarely use so it's not really in the way to the point of making sure we do it. So, this will be happening, I just need to put the tree skirt away than it's all ready to go away. I want to write down my meals for this month so I can start creating meal plans. I stopped stressing about EVERY day and started doing 4 days a week of planning (I plan just dinners). I am ready to increase to maybe 5-6 nights a week and include a night of left overs. Any tips for meal planning? There are my goals for this month. I am going to keep it simple so I can complete each goal. Did you make January goals along with your 2016 goals? Let's hear them! |
New York Sheep and Wool Festival Barb and I will be in Building A, Booth 28, just like last year. Come and visit and see my just finished rug, The White Whale Tavern . I hooked this rug to look like an old trade sign, using 1 inch strips of fabric ripped by hand. The texture is amazing. I dyed up a new background color for this piece, which I call Blue Whale, and I'll have a few pieces available for purchase at the Festival. |
Discovering fabulous new artists is one of the best parts of living in the Big Apple. One of my current favorites, singer/songwriter J. Cabrera, is performing tomorrow at Broadway Baby, a lounge and bistro in Midtown West. J. Cabrera performing at The Set I had the pleasure of hearing Cabrera not too long ago when he took the stage at Time Out New York ’s free monthly performing arts showcase. |
I’ve got a confession… this is my first week of half marathon training, and I’ve already modified my training plan. Though, I’m pretty sure it was for the better! Yesterday, I worked from home. St. Louis got the first snow-storm of the year. Frankly, I wouldn’t even call it that. But our road crews did a terrible job prepping & treating the roads so the traffic in the city came to a grinding halt. After covering only 5.5 miles in 1 hour (of a 25 mile commute!) I turned around and worked from home. Being home all day I had zero motivation to get back in the car to go to the gym. So I swapped out the rest day that was supposed to be today. Boy am I glad I did. I feel like I was ready for today! Plan: 3 mile run + strength. What I did: RUN.
.25mile warm up – 4 mins
3.1 Mile Run – 30 mins
.25 mile cool down – 4 mins My hubby gave me the strength plan. It was pretty good. He suggested I use 25lb dumbbells. I wussed out and only used 10lbs. boo A yummy Pumpkin Protein Shake is holding me over until we eat our very late dinner. What? 8pm is late right? PS – I got my compression tights in the mail today. Feel great on my legs! But my abdomen is getting compressed too. Blaugh. Does anyone have/use these things? I’m hoping they help my leg recovery speed up. It seems no matter how much I stretch my gluteus & hips are always aching. |
Just a pinch over a fortnight ago we all popped champagne bottles because this happened. That was fun. We should do that again sometime. I digress… On a night dominated by the NBA Draft, something equally awesome occurred at 3rd & King for the San Francisco Giants. Fresh off of sweeping skunking the Los Angeles Dodgers in shutout fashion, Madison Bumgarner took the hill and spun a gem against a potent Cincinnati Reds lineup: Precocious [pri-koh-shuhs] adjective: unusually advanced or mature in development. If aliens came to Planet Earth and asked me to explain who/what Madison Bumgarner is, I’d tell them that he’s precocious. Scratch that, I’d tell them that he’s a man-child. I mean seriously, I can’t come up with the right hyperbole to succinctly encompass the greatness of Bumgarner. Similar to the JFK assassination, he is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside of an enigma. He is also 22 years-old. I am 24. Embarrassment becomes me. Shucks, Madison was dealing all night. He stayed inside the strike zone, avoided the sweet spots of Reds’ hitters’ bats and hucked a few of his signature snot rockets in the process. This Reds lineup was missing Brandon Phillips, but even so, they are a dynamic bunch who saw their offense silenced by our young phenom. Bumgarner, simply put, was brilliant. His slider was working early and his arm-slot was disguising his pitches effectively. A 1-hitter is no easy task against anyone, let alone the NL Central leading Reds. Awhile back, my favorite Giants blogger Grant Brisbee (McCovey Chronicles) wrote a piece offering us all some understanding of the level of prodigiousness surrounding MadBum: “…I have documents — notified documents — that suggest he’s already a really, really good pitcher. Instead, this is a way to point out how he could get even better. Maybe he’ll perfect the changeup. Maybe he’ll take a little of the hump out of his curveball.
Or maybe he’ll just continue being awesome without changing a thing. I’m still cool with that.
But it’s easy to forget that he’s still just a puppy. He’s 22! There will be a first-round pick that old this year, and he’ll start in A-ball. And if everything goes right, he’ll go up to AA the following year, maybe with a stop in AAA. And then the year after that, he might get a rotation spot. And if he has some promising starts in between typical rookie nonsense, everyone will be like, yeah, this guy is onnnnnn track, baby. All going to plan.
Bumgarner is college-age, and he’s already awesome. You never hear about his potential; it’s as if he’s a finished product. It’s an unusual dynamic for a 22-year-old, and in a good way.” Game 4, World Series, on the road, on Halloween night, on baseball’s biggest stage, a 20 year-old kid mowed down one of the best lineups in Major League Baseball and made it look entirely too easy. I think I even saw him yawn. That last part may or may not be fabricated. You get the point. He’s the Mozart of pitching, except 6’5” and 235 LBs. Since Matt Cain’s Perfect Game, the Giants have gained 6 games in the NL West standings. They are now behind only the Rangers and Yankees for most wins in Major League Baseball. And the cherry on top? The Giants are the 1st team to throw four consecutive shutouts since the 1995 Baltimore Orioles. That team actually threw five. Dating back to June 14th at AT&T Park, the Giants have retired 112 straight batters without yielding a single run. It’ll be #18 on the bump tomorrow night. Your move, Matt Cain. You better throw another shutout because all the cool kids are doing it. |
How can the RSA help more people start and grow successful businesses, in ways that improve their financial situation and personal wellbeing? The number of people working for themselves has reached a record high. Yet there is still much that we do not know about them. Our aim is to plug this gap in thinking and explore the reasons why greater numbers are turning to self-employment, what this means for our economy and society, and how we can support them to achieve their potential. More about this project Read our self employment charter Latest Blogs & Articles What can we learn from the outcome of the Taylor Review? Here are 6 takeaways to get us started. Universal Credit will be a disaster for the self-employed. So why are so few people sounding the alarm? Our new report with FSB calls for a movement of mass self-organising among the self-employed. Ben Dellot gives an overview of the report’s findings. Latest Publications Our report argues that the government should make it a priority to stimulate recruitment among sole traders, but that any new policy interventions will need to break from tradition and begin to draw upon insights from behaviou ... We look at the emergence and impact of online craft marketplaces and consider what their growth might signal about the way business will change in the future. We call for a movement of mass self-organising among the self-employed, and set out a number of ideas to take grassroots initiatives from the margins to the mainstream. If the government is serious about improving the productivity, resilience and long-term financial success of the self-employed, then it must be more willing to intervene to set problems right. Events Tuesday 3rd February 2015 The RSA hosts a one-day summit, in partnership with Google and Etsy, bringing together leading thinkers to explore the causes and consequences of the boom in self-employment. |
Last night the St. Louis Cardinals became the 2011 World Series Champions. At the start of September, they were 10 1/2 games out and just about everyone had written them off by that point. I was at what turned out to be pivotal game for the Cards on September 9, 2011. It was the start of a three game match-up with the Braves. The Braves had a very comfortable lead against the Cards for the NL Wild Card spot. However, the Braves ended up losing that game 4-3 in the bottom of the 10th. That was the game that things went downhill for the Braves and uphill for the Cards. Over the next 7 weeks, the Cardinals went on to have one of the biggest comebacks and turnarounds in baseball history. Even if you're not a Cardinals fan, you have to admit that this World Series was a great series. There was some bad baseball, but there was also a lot of great baseball. Games 3 (all of those runs) and 6 (extra innings and there were two times the Cardinals were one strike away from loosing) were particularly memorable. In post-season, all the talk is going to be about Pujols. He's a great player and if he sticks in St. Louis, he'll have a career even after he retires. They'll put him in the office, maybe even hire him as manager if he wants. He'll get a statue in front of Busch Stadium and will probably be even more adored in St. Louis than Stan Musial. His agent want a 10-year $300 million contract. Had the Cardinals not be idiots and signed Matt Holliday for such an extensive and expensive contract (7 years for $120 million) in 2009, they would have the money they needed to keep Pujols around. Holliday isn't a consistent player. He has moments of greatness, but they aren't reliable. Pujols is and has been. In the next 10 years, Pujols probably will be reliable for that time, but it's difficult to say. Ten years is a long time, particularly when a baseball player is reaching the twilight of his career. I'm not sure what I would do if I was in Pujols place. He'll make a great deal of money either way and his family should never have to worry about finances ever for at least three generations. He'll make a lot more money in the short term if he goes to New York (about the only team in baseball with a bottomless bank account). However, if I was in Pujols's shoes, I think I would stay. St. Louis has been his home his whole career and no matter where he goes, he'll never have "fans" who like him as much as they do in St. Louis. If he stays in St. Louis and he gets injured or his career ends abruptly, he'll still be adored. If he leaves, he'll be seen as a traitor who betrayed his hometown for more money; in the St. Louis area he'll be the Benedict Arnold of baseball. The true Cardinal fans'll resent him for awhile, but then welcome him back with open arms whenever he does come back to visit, but most of Cardinal Nation isn't composed of true baseball and Cardinal fans. There are only about 15% of "Cardinal Nation" that are true baseball and Cardinal fans. The rest of "Cardinal Nation" is composed of fairweather fans who care more about the spectacle than they do the game. In fact, most Cardinal fans don't even consider themselves to be a part of "Cardinal Nation" (I don't, for instance). That's a neat little marketing tool creating by the Cardinal advertisers to get people to come to the games and sell merchandise to people who normally couldn't care less about baseball. I'm relatively young, but I'm pretty much and old foagie, fuddy-duddy in the way I view the world and see things. Pujols is a great player, but he's only a part of the Cardinals. For me, the players I've enjoyed watching the most this season have been guys like this: Berkman is a classic old-school ball player. He's not really skinning or overtly muscular. He's built they way Babe Ruth and Joe Jackson and Ty Cobb were. He looks the way a baseball player (except for pitchers) is supposed to look in my mind. Not only that, but he plays with a pure love for the game. You can see it in his eyes every time he's up to bat and with every play that he makes (see picture above). He loves the game of baseball. This season he's had a comeback, too. The Braves and Yankees all wrote the guy off before the Cardinals signed him this year. Even though he wants to coach college baseball in Texas after he retires from the majors, I think he'd like to stick around St. Louis until then. I know I'd love watching him.
Then there's David Freese. David Freese is a St. Louis native. When you think about it, it's pretty amazing that a local boy goes into the majors and eventually becomes the hero and MVP of a World Series playing for his hometown team in the ballpark not far from where he grew up. Freese has had a good season, but it's one that got better in the post season. Freese saved the Cardinals several times not with just hits and homeruns, but with stellar plays. Other players did, too, but the other players aren't local boys like Freese. That's what makes his story that much more special.
Congratulations, St. Louis Cardinals on a job well done. 11 in 2011. I didn't think it was possible, but it's happened. My Dad and Grandpa always said the "Cardinals can never do things the easy way." I guess this season has shown that. But, even though they didn't do it the easy way, they ended up doing it the right way. |
Morning by Morning, June 17 - "Companions of Jesus" Good morning, Lord Jesus. In the communion of prayer, make me one with You, Lord God -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. ... "Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and realized that they were uneducated and ordinary men, they were amazed and recognized them as companions of Jesus" (Acts 4:13). I want to have such a boldness of faith and character of spirit that everyone knows I'm a companion of Jesus. I don't want to be known for education or accomplishments, for status or wealth, but by the seal of the Spirit of Christ that marks my life (Romans 8:9). By the grace of God, I'll not be ashamed of the gospel and I'll not be embarrassed to be known as a man of God, a man of faith, a man of prayer who passionately loves my Lord and seeks to walk with Jesus every day. "For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith" (Romans 1:16). In the power of Your mercy and love, I'm a servant and a son, a companion and a friend, of the One created me and calls me by name to join with Him in the journey of faith every day (John 15:15). So fill me afresh with Your Spirit today so that all know that I've been with You. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Be encouraged today! In the Love of Jesus, I pray you will be filled afresh by the Holy Spirit, centered in Christ, and embraced by the Father, so that everyone knows you are a companion of Jesus Please pray the same for me. God bless you, my friend! Friends, I'm available for spiritual retreats, revivals, conferences, and ministry engagements through Messiah Ministries at home and abroad, especially on topics of spiritual maturity and transformation, inner healing prayer ministry, and spiritual authority in Christ-- ministering the healing love of God and preparing the way of the Lord. I'm excited to be speaking again in the teaching and equipping sessions this summer at the Aldersgate 2015 National Conference on Spirit Filled Living hosted this year in Lexington, Kentucky . Please come join us July 9-12, 2015 Tommy Hays | Messiah Ministries Healing from the Inside Out Pastoral Director | Rapha God Ministries 4 Dominion Drive, Building 1 San Antonio, Texas 78257 Please share this word to encourage a friend! |
My place is good for solo adventurers. We are a family with a wee daughter. Your are welcome to our newly refurbished flat. We have a nice bright back garden that you could use to relax. Plenty of buses to the city center, leith walk, and Portobello beach. We are able to speak English, Spanish, Polish and French. Enjoy Edinburgh! Not safe or suitable for children (0-12 years) Check-in is anytime after 4PM Love travelling, going out for a nice restaurant and visiting family and friends. I have friends from all around the world, and it is great! English, Español, Français, Polski Always communicate through Airbnb To protect your payment, never transfer money or communicate outside of the Airbnb website or app. Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom Exact location information is provided after a booking is confirmed. Explore other options in and around Edinburgh More places to stay in Edinburgh: |
I've always considered myself more of a walnut and case-colored shotgunner, but over the weekend, I found myself in possession of a DPMS Panther Arms 5.56mm Oracle . The deal was hard to pass up -- $699 at Cabela's, and I had about $400 in Cabela's gift cards that made the effective price ridiculously cheap. So now I own what's essentially the same gun as the standard-issue field weapon of the U.S. military. Most everyone that I've told thus far (mosty non-hunters or non-shooters) ask me what I'll do with it. A fair question, and one I expect I'll get from some hunting purists who disdain this sort of firearm for one reason or another. All I know is that my son and I are getting pretty excited to take it out and punch a few holes in some paper. Sure, a .22 is cheaper, but not nearly as effective against zombie attacks. I've only dipped my big toe into the subculture of the AR-15, and while some seems a bit over the top, the boy and I are excited about doing a few mods and making the gun our own. Sort of a father-son soapbox racer project for the 2nd Amendment crowd. Stay tuned. |
This past weekend the family spent time in Hanes Mall and the West End shopping. Oh it was such a beautiful day to shop and walk. Take a look at my great finds - psst it's a lot of spring/summer accessories! I am doing some "spring cleaning" from my phone too. I have not seen fun dip candy in a long time. Made me so happy. The boyfriend bought me a knit set so I could knit some cool gear! Here are some photos that you have missed out on. |
I've been here for about five weeks now. We only have one more weeks of classes and then we're loosed upon Thailand. I may go to Phnom Penh for a few days before Owen gets here on the 17th, then it's a 29th birthday celebration for me in Bangkok. I can't even think of what I'd want to do. I should imagine something amazing, but all I want right now is a bagel with cream cheese. I don't even really like bagels. They burned the rice fields by my house. Apparently it is not the year to harvest rice. I have lots that I want to write about this, but I am completely distracted by the American speaking on Skype next to me. He's relating how it was to see the new Batman movie in IMAX here, which I did last week. Me and Rung in Bangkok The band we saw in Bangkok last weekend. Us, again, watching the band. Ugh. This computer is cutting in and out and it's taking forever to upload photos. Now I log off! |
Okay so last year I came across this new DELISH receipe. OREO balls. I mean seriously they should be illegal to make and share (who am I kidding - I don't share - okay okay so I do but not willingly). Anyways it is so simple it's insane.
You'll need one pkg of Oreo cookies (double stuffed or mint work as well but are VERY rich - don't say I didn't warn you), Cream Cheese and Dipping Chocolate. That's it.
Easy Peasy.
So since my food processor hates me and didn't want to crush the Oreo's up nicely for me I went about it differently this year. It went so smoothly this way but please do it whatever way works for you.
I started by seperating the white filling from the Oreo. See pic below. (Stop drolling my goodness) I then used my handy dandy Magic Bullet to crush up the Cookie portion of the Oreo. See nice and fine. (Okay I thought I turned that darn pic - opps) Now the fun part. Now many will probably use a mixer or a utensil of some sort but that is not how I roll. I like to get right on in there and be a hands on baker. That's right I slap a glove on and after tossing the crushed Oreo's, white filling and cream cheese into a new bowl I just dive in and mix by hand. Just keep mixing and mixing until you get this nice glossy mass of yummy goodness. (Shiney isn't it?) Now you'll start pinching off a bit (or use a small melon baller) and roll it into a ball. See? Aren't they pretty all lined up? After rolling all of it into a ball I pop them into the freezer just to give them a chance to harden up. Okay now you'll take and coat each ball in some yummy DELISH chocolate. (Again I swore I turned that pic) |
Much has transpired in the lives of ordinary Malaysians in the last 10 months since GE13. The Rakyat has learned to cope with rising cost of living, aggressive voices of bigotry and religious fervor and fundamentalism. All of which is at a feverish pitch which we have never seen before in Malaysia. Many are frustrated that Putrajaya provides little to no leadership and in fact many are convinced that it is UMNO who is behind much of the provocation. Somehow, it is as if there is a disconnect between the BN government campaigning before GE13 and the government after GE 13. The promises, the upbeatness, the good times vaporized as soon as the ministers were sworn in. Subsidies withdrawn bit by bit, utility rates go up and soon everything else rises along. Everyone feels it but perhaps the anger is exacerbated when the leaders continue to live lavish lives while telling the Rakyat to modify their lifestyle. Everyone is affected from the taxi driver to the Manager in the boardroom by this sudden and steep inflation. Our lives are all the more harder and precarious after GE13. The Kajang by-election according to the politicians is a way to defend Selangor and for the state to progress beyond what it has accomplished thus far. Many disagree with the way it has been done. However one sees it, whether it is ethical or not, we must take full advantage to tell the BN Government that our lives in this last 10 months have been difficult. We were promised much but little has been delivered. We are fed up with the bigotry, incitement, racial politics and hate speeches that divide us as Malaysians. Having the Kajang by-election is a way for the Rakyat to voice her frustrations and anger. I believe Kajang is going to be a Referendum on the BN government. Malaysia post GE13 is very different and the people are living harder lives. All this while race religious relations is at an all time low. Kajang must be the representative for all Malaysia to vote unanimously in support of a strong Selangor state government but more so, for a new Federal Government under the leadership of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and his Pakatan Rakyat. |
There were many cross-currents in the financial markets during the last week, but one of the dominant themes was the spike in Treasury yields. As expectations for interest rates move higher, the banks are also catching a bid. Long able to borrow at Bernanke-induced artificially low rates, now banks are finding better prospects on the lending side – and have the added bonus of a larger yield spread on their loans as interest rates start to climb. These factors make banks the focal point of this week’s chart of the week. In the graphic below, note that the upper study shows banks have been consistently underperforming the S&P 500 index for the past seven months. In the last week, however, banks have shown a dramatic turnaround that has lifted the SPDR KBW Bank ETF (NYSE:KBW), the popular bank ETF, above resistance (dotted blue line) and also reversed the trend of outperforming the broader market. As was the case in 2010, the performance of the banks will be a critical factor in the performance of the broader market in 2011. Said another way, banks will continue to be a critical barometer not just of global growth, but of the ability of various economies to deal with threats to growth, such as sovereign debt and other issues. Disclosure: Author long KBE |
Robin, Mary Jane, me and Megan Precious daughters, Megan and Robin Robin, my daughter, and I had the wonderful privilege of taking a three week road trip this summer. We traveled in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Utah. Our final destination was MaryJanes Farm in Moscow, Idaho where we stayed at MaryJanes Outpost B&B for three nights. On our second day there we enjoyed a Tea Party hosted by MaryJane, her daughter, Meg and other gals at the farm, Kim, Rebekah, and Alicia. It was such fun to share this time with farmgirls from Wisconsin, Missouri, Idaho, and Washington. (I'm from Colorado and my daughter is from Arizona) It was such and honor to meet Mary Jane and for a few moments we "traded" daughters. As you can see we had such fun and enjoyed each other so much. I know that MJ and Meg are close and their relationship and friendship is priceless. I am so grateful for my daughter and the incredible friendship we have and that we can just have the best time doing things together, traveling, sharing a tent, laughing, stopping at Starbucks, hanging out . . .whatever. It was the trip of a lifetime! Time with my daughter!!! I am blessed!!! |
Mark Piro has been a fixture in the downtown music scene for over 10 years as a record label employee (Razor & Tie Entertainment, Good Morning Monkey Records), and musician (The Shaker Pegs). Working his way up at Razor & Tie after finishing studies at NYU, Mark has transitioned from office work to studio work (including work on the platinum-selling Kidz Bop series) to a combination of office and studio work. With Mark at the helm, Razor & Tie recently launched the Analog Spark record label, an imprint intended for audiophiles. Analog Spark launched last year with a reissue of The Sound Of Music on SACD and 180-gram vinyl, which was in collaboration with the soundtrack’s 50th anniversary. Its second announced release, coming out in August, is a vinyl release of The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Jazz Goes To College. As Analog Spark’s first two releases have little in common, readers should not be surprised that future planned releases will be of other genres – the common bond between Analog Spark reissues being their supreme audio, deluxe packaging and overall attention to detail. Mark took the time to answer some questions about the West Village-based record label, also helping to clarify about what constitutes better audio quality. What does a typical working day for you look like? Mark Piro: A typical day involves staying on top of all of the current reissue projects I’m working on. Each title is in a different stage of production so I have to make sure each and every one is moving along. I see each project through from start to finish. Starting with clearing the title with the label, to working with their A&R person, to making sure we’re using the best audio sources, to approving test pressings and artwork — it’s a long process that has to take place before we get the finished product. In addition, I’m always researching new titles to reissue in order to try and stay ahead of the curve! Given that you started with Razor & Tie years ago and then found your way into more of a studio and editing capacity, where did the idea for Analog Spark come from? M: I’m an avid vinyl and CD collector, making weekly trips — okay, sometimes daily — to local record stores and I’m constantly doing research in order to find the best-sounding pressing of whatever album I’m looking for. Having been a fan of other audiophile labels and also having a great amount of music knowledge, I thought it made sense to pitch the idea of launching my own audiophile imprint to Razor & Tie. The label has a long history of well-regarded CD reissues and the owners share the same passion for this important historical music. What are some of the record labels that inspired you to want to run a label of your own? M: Mobile Fidelity, Analogue Productions and ORG set a very high standard of what an audiophile reissue should be. I hold Analog Spark to that same standard and try to make the best-sounding pressing of whatever album we are reissuing. What was the first album you purchased with your own money? M: [The Beatles’] Beatles For Sale Who and/or what got you into vinyl? M: There are home videos that exist of me at age three or four listening to The Monkees’ first album on my Fisher Price record player. I feel like that was the beginning of a long love affair with the vinyl format. In high school and college I bought CDs, but I also bought the vinyl for albums I really loved. I spent many hours at a record store near my high school where I discovered so many amazing albums and learned a great deal of information that is still valuable to what I’m doing today. What is it about vinyl that makes you prefer it to the convenience of streaming or CDs? M: I use streaming and CDs, but my preferred listening experience is vinyl. For me, vinyl provides an immersive experience. It makes you focus and engage with what you are listening to. You cannot just hit play and leave it in the background. It also allows you to experience the album as a complete thought, as the artist intended. For someone unfamiliar with SACD technology, how does it compare to a regular CD? M: A hybrid-SACD is a high-resolution CD that has two layers: a high-resolution layer that is playable in SACD players as well as some Blu-ray and DVD players, and a standard CD layer that is playable in all CD players. Some discs may also include a multi-channel layer if the album has a 3 channel, quad or 5.1 mix. Assuming that the correct audio sources are used and it’s well-mastered, the high-resolution layer of the SACD should provide greater detail and sound better than a standard CD. Is there criteria as to what makes something a proper release for your label? M: An ideal candidate for us is a great album that’s also well recorded. However with the current vinyl resurgence, there are many labels looking for similar albums. We hope our titles will stretch across eras and genres and bring light to artists and albums that have been overlooked thus far. The Sound Of Music was the first release from Analog Spark. Did you ever worry that the release of a soundtrack could pigeonhole your label? M: No, if anything, I think it brought a great awareness to the launch of the Analog Spark. The Sound Of Music soundtrack was always on my list of albums that we should reissue. It had never been reissued on vinyl in the U.S. since its original issue. That we were able to work on the 50th anniversary edition was an added bonus. It’s an iconic and wonderful-sounding record that is essential to American music, film and culture. What looks ahead for the label in the coming months? M: We have many exciting releases coming up including titles from The Dave Brubeck Quartet, Ben Folds Five, Laura Nyro and Kate Bush, among others. In addition, we are also working on a set of original cast recordings that were made during the Golden Age of Broadway musicals. These titles include West Side Story, My Fair Lady and Fiddler On The Roof. They have been cut direct from the original analog tapes and not only sound great, but also feature some of the most important songs of the 20th century. When you’re not occupied with the label, what do you like to do yourself? M: I love playing music and I am forever expanding upon my internal song bank. It also goes without saying that I spend a lot of my free time listening to and buying records. For me, the greatest reward that comes from my record buying habit is the discovery of a new song or album that I fall in love with, and that ends up becoming a part of my musical knowledge and dialogue. Finally, Mark, any last words for the kids? M: Don’t trust anyone who doesn’t like The Beatles. Leave a comment |
Qaisra Hayat's Famous Urdu Novel "Zaat Ka Safar" is here for free download and read online. This Urdu novel is authored by Ms. Qaisra Hayat who is also the author of famous Urdu novel "Barish Kay Bad". The author of this Novel is an Urdu short and long stories writer, digest writer and one of the popular female Urdu novelists from Pakistan. She has written many other fiction Urdu stories. She is best known for her beautiful Urdu novels and stories. Zaat Ka Safar Pdf Urdu novel is fabulous Urdu novel. The story of this novel is distinguish and different from the formal Urdu fiction stories. The story of this Novel is a kind of spiritual but the real subject of this novel is "Zaat" (Essence). In simple words, this is the story of Human and his/her feelings. Zaat Ka Safar Urdu novel is here in Pdf format and as long as 304 pages with clear display. The Pdf file size is as small as 3.18 MB only. You can free download and read online Zaat Ka Safar Novel from the table below the sample pages. Sample Pages of the Urdu Novel "Zaat Ka Safar" By Qaisra Hayat Download the complete Novel of Zaat Ka Safar from the table below Brief Information about the Pdf
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Year B – Second Sunday of Lent Genesis 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18, (26B) “You’ve gotta have faith,” we hear echoing across our lives. Whether it’s a pop song, a professional sports team chant, a catchphrase of self-help, or a prayerful mantra, we strive to be people of faith when we hear those kinds of words. Today’s readings push us to really consider the spiritual gift of faith as it shows up in our lives and the life of the Church. To many of us, faith is fine until it is challenging, right? Abraham withholds nothing, not even he who he most loves on the earth, as he trusts in God, faithfully. Peter, James and John witness a transfigured Jesus, seeing their friend and teacher in a new light even as they continue to question and wonder just what “rising from the dead” might mean.
The charism of faith is defined in the Uniquely His book by Sheila Mellick as “The special grace to have such great trust in God and belief in his will in a given situation that one acts in faith or obedience without concern of the outcome.”
As we consider the experiences of the faith-full people in today’s readings, we are invited to examine our own charism of faith. In what situations of life so far, have you leaned in and actively chosen to trust fully in God’s loving presence in your life, without concern for the outcome? How are you challenged to practice the charism of faith in some aspect of your life today, or this week?
In the Joy of the Gospel document, Pope Francis uses the words “mysteriously fruitful” to describe a world in which disciples and churches are fully embracing their charisms. When we embrace and practice trusting in God in our daily lives, we plant the seeds of faith that carry the hope of “mysterious fruitfulness” in them. Imagine the harvest that can grow from such faith and cultivation!
Where will you plant and nurture seeds of faith today, believing in God’s abundant fruitfulness at some future point? |
Ruth Fielding at Sunrise Farm Hi, it’s day 4 of Ruth Fielding series. Tomorrow is the last one photo-Josephine Lawrence, known as Alice Emerson which is her writers name- author of most of the Ruth Fielding series. Her Dad was a doctor and when she was growing up the family moved to Hopewell New York (by Rochester) which is 5 hours Northwest of where they were, Newark New Jersey. Sounds like Hopewell was a farming community which may be the motivation for this book Ruth Fielding at Sunrise Farm. The book wasn’t my favorite so far, but still it was a good read. Ruth and her school friends go to Madge Steel’s farm for the week of 4th of July. Orphans are found; 2 little brothers and a big sister brought back together to round off a happy ending. The best parts of the book-description of their 4th of July celebration and the fireworks accidently going off in the wagon… those poor scared horses. I found this info on the author ! Check it out |
Four years ago on this blog, I collected a number of quotes from the essays of George Orwell in a post I called George Orwell's Ready Reckoner . It was the first of what I intended to be a series. But, as way led on to way, I never got around to a second installment. I hope this makes up for my negligence. As the following quotes demonstrate, he was, aside from a superb prose stylist, a sensitive literary critic, a political thinker of genius, and a fearless observer of the world around him. As Orwell wrote of Shakespeare, "If one has once read [him] with attention, it is not easy to go a day without quoting him, because there are not many subjects of major importance that he does not discuss or at least mention somewhere or other, in his unsystematic but illuminating way." Orwell could have said as much of himself. Here is the latest batch, in no particular order. It is difficult to think of any politician who has lived to be eighty and still been regarded as a success. What we call a 'great' statesman normally means one who dies before his policy has had time to take effect. If Cromwell had lived a few years longer he would probably have fallen from power, in which case we should now regard him as a failure. If Pétain had died in 1930, France would have venerated him as a hero and patriot. Napoleon remarked once that if only a cannon ball had happened to hit him when he was riding into Moscow, he would have gone down in history as the greatest man who ever lived. (James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution, 1946) When one thinks of the cruelty, squalor, and futility of war - and in this particular case of the intrigues, the persecutions, the lies and the misunderstandings - there is always the temptation to say: "One side is as bad as the other. I am neutral." In practice, however, one cannot be neutral, and there is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. (Looking Back on the Spanish War, 1942) You cannot hold an imaginary conversation with a Dickens character as you can with, say, Peter Bezukhov. And this is not merely because of Tolstoy's greater seriousness, for there are also comic characters that you can imagine yourself talking to - Bloom, for instance, or Pécuchet, or even Wells's Mr Polly. It is because Dickens's characters have no mental life. (Charles Dickens, 1940) There is always a temptation to claim that any book whose tendency one disagrees with must be a bad book from a literary point of view. (Notes on Nationalism, 1945) "Raffles" is a good book, and so is "The Island of Dr. Moreau," and so is "La Chartreuse de Parme,: and so is "Macbeth"; but they are "good" at very different levels. Similarly, "If Winter Comes" and "The Well-Beloved" and "An Unsocial Socialist" and "Sir Lancelot Greaves" are all bad books, but at different levels of "badness." This is the fact that the hack-reviewer has made it his special business to obscure. (In Defense of the Novel, 1936) Shall the common man be pushed back into the mud, or shall he not? I myself believe, perhaps on insufficient grounds, that the common man will win his fight sooner or later, but I want it to be sooner and not later - some time within the next hundred years, say, and not some time within the next ten thousand years. (Looking Back on the Spanish War, 1942) Philosophers, writers, artists, even scientists, not only need encouragement and an audience, they need constant stimulation from other people. It is almost impossible to think without talking. If Defoe had really lived on a desert island he could not have written Robinson Crusoe, nor would he have wanted to. (As I Please 22, 1944) What is the special quality in modern life that makes a major human motive out of the impulse to bully others? (As I Please 63, 1946) A joke worth laughing at always has an idea behind it, and usually a subversive idea. (Charles Dickens, 1940) When we gorge ourselves this Christmas, if we do get the chance to gorge ourselves, it is worth giving a thought to the thousand million human beings, or thereabouts, who will be doing no such thing. For in the long run our Christmas dinners would be safer if we could make sure that everyone else had a Christmas dinner as well. (As I Please 66, 1946)
... the ancient boneheap of Europe, where every grain of soil has passed through innumerable human bodies. (Inside the Whale, 1940)
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. (Politics and the English Language, 1946)
Art and propaganda are never quite separable, and ... what are supposed to be purely aesthetic judgements are always corrupted to some extent by moral or political or religious loyalties. (Tolstoy and Shakespeare, 1941) If the intellectual liberty which without a doubt has been one of the distinguishing marks of western civilisation means anything at all, it means that everyone shall have the right to say and to print what he believes to be the truth, provided only that it does not harm the rest of the community in some quite unmistakable way. (The Freedom of the Press, 1946)
The theory that civilisation moves in recurring cycles is one way out for people who hate the concept of human equality. (Review of The Development of William Butler Yeats by V.K. Narayana Menon, 1943))
All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist or understand. (Why I Write, 1946)
Much of the literature that comes to us out of the past is permeated by and in fact founded on beliefs (the belief in the immortality of the soul, for example) which now seem to us false and in some cases contemptibly silly. (Inside the Whale, 1940) What people always demand of a popular novelist is that he shall write the same book over and over again, forgetting that a man who would write the same book twice could not even write it once. Any writer who not is utterly lifeless moves upon a kind of parabola, and the downward curve is implied in the upward one. (Charles Dickens, 1940) Nearly all Western thought since the last war, certainly all "progressive" thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. (Review of Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler, 1940) Every piece of writing has its propaganda aspect, and yet in any book or play or poem or what-not that is to endure there has to be a residuum of something we can only call art. (Tolstoy and Shakespeare, 1941) Nourished for hundreds of years on a literature in which Right invariably triumphs in the last chapter, we believe half-instinctively that evil always defeats itself in the long run. Pacifism, for instance, is founded largely on this belief. Don't resist evil, and it will somehow destroy itself. But why should it? What evidence is there that it does? And what instance is there of a modern industrialized state collapsing unless conquered from the outside by military force? (Looking Back on the Spanish War, 1942)
War is of its nature barbarous, it is better to admit that. If we see ourselves as the savages we are, some improvement is possible, or at least thinkable. (As I Please 25, 1944) All revolutions are failures, but they are not all the same failure. (Arthur Koestler, 1944) The worst crimes are not always the punishable ones. (Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali, 1944)
The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory. (James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution, 1946) The creative impulse seems to last for about 15 years: in a prose writer these 15 years would probably be between the ages of 30 and 45, or thereabouts ... Many writers, perhaps most, ought simply to stop writing when they reach middle age. Unfortunately our society will not let them stop. Most of them know no other way of earning a living, and writing, with all that goes with it - quarrels, rivalries, flattery, the sense of being a semi-public figure - is habit-forming. (As I Please 64, 1946) It is obvious that any economic system would work equitably if men could be trusted to behave themselves but long experience has shown that in matters of property only a tiny minority of men will behave any better than they are compelled to do. (Review of Communism and Man by F.J. Sheed, 1939) All through the Christian ages, and especially since the French Revolution, the Western world has been haunted by the idea of freedom and equality; it is only an idea, but it has penetrated to all ranks of society ... Nearly everyone, whatever his actual conduct may be, responds emotionally to the idea of human brotherhood. (Charles Dickens, 1940) The art of writing is in fact largely the perversion of words, and I would even say that the less obvious this perversion is, the more thoroughly it has been done. For a writer who seems to twist words out of their meanings (e.g. Gerard Manley Hopkins) is really, if one looks closely, making a desperate attempt to use them straightforwardly. (New Words, 1940)
When sexual frankness ceased to be possible, picaresque literature was robbed of perhaps half of its subject matter. The eighteenth-century inn where it was almost abnormal to go into the right bedroom was a lost dominion. (Tobias Smollett: Scotland's Best Novelist, 1944) |
Honestly, part of me doesn't want to write anything about our Norway tour because I know my words will not do this trip justice. I will not be able to convey how much fun the drive was, or how majestic the mountains were, or how seriously blue the water was. But, I do want to document some memories from the trip, so I'm going to give it a whirl :) If you really want to get a feel for our trip, the video that Brian made is PHENOMENAL! He did such a great job putting together the highlights. I've watched it several times now, and it still has me laughing and wishing I was still in Norway. Without further ado... Norway Motorcycle Tour from Brian Rentsch on Vimeo. When we were first planning this trip, I have to admit I was a little nervous. Nine days on the motorcycle? Will my butt survive this trip? But I followed my husband's intuition, and I'm SO glad that I did. in a larger map On Friday, 11 June, we put the finishing touches on packing the motorcycle up, and we took off for Hannover, Germany. Hannover was just a half-way point so that our Saturday could be a little bit leisurely and so that we could reduce the chances of missing our ferry in Kiel, Germany! On Saturday we arrived in Kiel just in time! We were able to check in and get all of our proper documentation, but we didn't have to wait long to get onto the ferry. A couple of funny notes about this part of the trip. When we pulled up to the ferry check-in, I asked Brian, "Do you need my passport now or later?" And then terror struck his face - he didn't bring his passport. We were leaving Germany, going to another country, so we started to think the worst. What if we can't go at all?? I've never seen Brian so shaken up. It obviously worked out, but that was a little scare! Another fun note , I had no idea what to expect for this "ferry" trip. I had only seen pictures of Brian's ferry to Scotland, which looked pretty industrial and functional. To my surprise, this "ferry" that we were taking to Oslo wasn't a ferry. It was a full-on cruise! With shops, gourmet restaurants, bars, shows - the whole bit! That was a great start to the trip : ) Two vacations in one - a cruise and a motorcycle tour! Getting on the ferry The cruise was a lot of fun! We celebrated the start of our trip with a fantastic dinner and a great view out of a wall-sized window looking out to the sea. We spent the night on the boat, and the next morning the cruise into the fjord to Oslo was gorgeous. We had our worst weather that first day, which made us a little nervous about the rest of the trip, but it only got better! Another funny note about our arrival in Oslo. We decided to go ahead and fill up on gas before leaving the city because we had no idea how many gas stations we would see on back roads in Norway. When we went to pay, we had another small scare. It didn't seem like our credit or bank cards were going to work! How were we going to pay for anything? Then after speaking with the gas station attendant for a few minutes, we figured out that Norwegian credit cards all have PINs like our debit cards do. So the store you're trying to pay just has to approve the card without a PIN. That lesson came in very useful throughout the trip! But it definitely had us worried for a few minutes. The drive from Oslo to Lom was a great start. We were so excited to be there, and we were ecstatic to find that the roads were perfect for motorcycling. They were all either two or one single lane, perfect for a cruising speed on the bike. And the roads were not crowded at all, which made it so relaxing. On our first break for a snack, we noticed the gas station next door had an interesting offer : ) 59 krone is about $1.50, for those of you who are thinking, "That's an expensive burger!" haha Texas love, all the way in Norway! Me in my gear, excited to be on the road! For some reason, Brian and I thought the next picture of me was hilarious. This picture was taken right before we did our first mountain pass, and it was on our coldest day on the trip. I was pretty cold when we took the photo, so I wasn't too animated! My impression of a foosball player... After a few hours of driving, we arrived in Lom, our first overnight stop in Norway. It's an adorable small town that had a really cool stave church. Lom in the distance We were pleasantly surprised to find our hotel was really nice! Their restaurant had an award-winning gourmet chef, and our room had a great view! The view from our first hotel For dinner, Brian and I tried the reindeer. We had never tried it before, but Rudolph tasted quite delicious! Then, for dessert they served a seasonal ice cream that is only served for about 3 weeks out of the year. It is flavored with a flower that blooms only for a few weeks, so of course we had to try it. Ice cream...yes please! It was definitely interesting - kind of floral tasting, but it was very refreshing. The ice cream was also served in a frozen rock. Nice presentation of ice cream in a rock For our first night in Norway, we noticed how far north we actually were! This picture was taken at midnight - still plenty of light outside! On Monday, we had two famous mountain passes ahead of us! We bundled up nicely, just in case, and I'm glad we did! At the top of both passes, it was quite snowy that day, and the bike handled the conditions beautifully. The passes were called , and they were both breathtaking, but very cold. It was fun to watch the temperature go up and down on our dashboard of the bike as we went up and down in elevation! In the valleys, we had great weather. On our second day we experienced our first actual ferry rides (unlike the cruise) in Norway. The ferries were so efficient, and we always seemed to arrive right when the ferry was showing up! We drove all the way to on our second day, which was the furthest north that we traveled. We ate at this cute little restaurant on the water, and this was our view... That night in Kristiansund, I woke up around 2:30am to find that the sun was still shining like it was early evening! Thank goodness we slept really well, despite the bright sunshine. On Tuesday, our big event was the . When we were buying our motorcycle a few months ago, a picture of the Atlantic Road was behind the sales guy, and Brian and I had both said, "Let's go there!" So we were very excited to see this sea-side road. And it didn't let us down. We had beautiful weather, and we spent a lot of time taking in the scenery and enjoying the drive along the coast. If you enlarge this picture by clicking on it, you'll see how clear the water was! And if you click on this picture, you'll be able to see the road a lot better in the distance. We didn't take this picture, but it gives you a better sense of what Atlantic Road is That day we drove back through the two mountain passes that we had driven the day before, and we were SO glad that we did. The weather was so much better the second day! We had blue skies and warmer temperatures, which made the views even more stunning and the drive even more fun! Trollstigen, day two (you can see the bridge if you open this picture) Tuesday night we stayed in Vangsnes. Because we had spent so much time exploring the Atlantic Road and the mountain passes, we didn't arrive until around 8pm that evening (with plenty of daylight to spare), so we basically ate a quick dinner and hit the sack! On Wednesday, we continued to drive south toward Stavanger. We were doing this part of the trip because we wanted to hike (Pulpit Rock), so we didn't have high expectations for the drive on Wednesday. Man, were we wrong! The weather was perfect, the views were just as beautiful as any other day, and the scenery was always evolving. If you click on the picture below, you'll see some sheep in the bottom right corner. We had several times on this part of the trip when we came around a bend, and there would be a whole flock of sheep in the road! Brian was always very aware, and I was so impressed that he knew when to be cautious. Later in the trip, he told me his secret - he looked for sheep pee in the road. hahaha! Unfortunately, I never had our video camera ready during any of our herding incidents, but it was fun to see their reactions to Brian revving the engine and honking his horn. More beautiful ferry crossings! And of course more awesome mountain passes For meals, we figured out that unless a restaurant received recommendations or accolades of some sort, a lot of the roadside restaurants just weren't the best value or the best food. So, we started to eat a lot of our lunches at gas stations or grocery stores. Wednesday night was a notable gas station experience. We had almost arrived at our overnight spot, and we were staying at a hostel that night, so we weren't sure if they'd have food available. We stopped at a gas station for dinner, just in case. We had seen these hot dogs with bacon wrapped around them at a couple of gas stations, so we decided to go for it! Those hot dogs were soooo yum. We got them with this "onion salad" on top, which was delicious! That night we stayed at a hostel that's located at the trail head for Preikestolen. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the main lodge had a bar, and the hostel itself was very clean. View from the main lodge - we stayed in the building with the grass roof! Grass roofs are very common in Norway The hike to Preikestolen is a very popular one, so we really wanted to beat the crowds and see it in its natural beauty. To be sure we were the first ones up on the rock, we woke up at 5am to start the 2 hour hike up. Luckily, Brian and I both love a good early morning hike, so we were in good spirits! It was a hazy morning, but we had high hopes that the clouds would part for us! It didn't quite work out exactly like that. When we reached the top, it was still quite cloudy. However, it was so eerie and cool to be inside a cloud. And I think it helped me deal with the shock of being up so high! We were the only people on the rock for a good 45 minutes, so we had time to take it all in, just the two of us. If you enlarge the picture below, you'll see me laying at the edge of the rock, looking down. Brian had climbed further up to get a good view of the rock, which of course, I felt high enough, so I let him go on without me. While I was sitting on the rock, taking everything in, the clouds literally parted for about a minute. I could see the fjord in the distance and the hills surrounding me. I really felt like God was giving us the view, and it was spectacular. Because we had left so early in the morning, we hadn't checked out or had breakfast yet, but we also wanted to see the view when the clouds burned off. We ran through our options, and we decided to just hike up again later! So that's what we did. We hiked down in time for breakfast and check out, and then we headed back up again! This time there were lots of people on the trail, including a lot of older folks. We were so impressed that they were doing this hike, because even though it's a popular hike, it definitely is not an easy one. Almost the entire trail involved climbing over rocks and boulders, as shown in the picture below. Preikestolen in the afternoon was incredible! The view just went on and on! We were so glad that we got to see it in the morning and the afternoon. Me, sitting close to the edge : ) Not with the waving people After we hiked down again, we jumped on the bike for a quick 2.5 hour drive to Hara. We stayed at a beautiful bed and breakfast type place there - we had an apartment with a loft and a great view. The lady who runs the place was so nice, and she made us a delicious pizza for dinner. After all of that hiking, a good, hearty pizza hit the spot! On Friday we drove to , which is just outside of Oslo. It was another one of those drives that we weren't sure about, but it turned out to be awesome. I don't think there's a bad road in Norway, so it was hard to mess up the planning! Drammen is definitely a modern little city, so after a few days in the country, it was fun to spend the night in the city. We saw the Heddal Stave Church on our drive to Drammen This type of barn is really common in Norway. This one was across from Heddal. The next morning was our last in Norway. Brian and I were definitely sad that our trip was coming to an end. For our last few hours in Oslo, we went to a really cool , where we saw lots of cool viking ships and a panoramic movie on Norway. It was the perfect way to finish our trip! Brian manning the whaling harpoon View from the Maritime Museum with our cruise in the background On our cruise out of Oslo, Brian and I sat in the Observation Lounge, enjoyed the view, and reminisced on all of the great memories from our trip! We loved riding through Norway, taking in its natural beauty; we loved having nothing to do but ride and enjoy each others company and conversation; we loved this trip. |
Description: You’re probably wondering how I ended up here. I’m still wondering the same thing. Olivia, Kelly, Christopher, Jason, and Eva have one thing in common: They're addicts. Addicts who have hit rock bottom and been stuck together in rehab to face their problems, face sobriety, and face themselves. None of them wants to be there. None of them wants to confront the truths about their pasts. And they certainly don’t want to share their darkest secrets and most desperate fears with a room of strangers. But they'll all have to deal with themselves and one another if they want to learn how to live. Because when you get that high, there's nowhere to go but down, down, down. I Give This ... This really was a distracting book to read. I think that's a given when you have four different view points. It's did have it's good qualities though. I did enjoy reading about each characters addictions and their lives. Each one has a different problem and different things that lead to there addictions. I found that fascinating. I enjoyed how each one came to terms with who they were and how their addictions were controlling their lives. While reading about each of their rock bottoms was a little horrifying, I liked having it all laid out for me. It helped me see how each one got to rehab, either by their own choice or by their actions. I think it also helped them when they each acknowledged that publicly. I didn't really like the 4 person storyline, especially when a couple characters didn't have a distinct voice. Occasionally I had a hard time figuring out who was talking. It also felt like I didn't get to know the characters as well as I would have liked because of this. I also just didn't like the rehab set up. It didn't feel real. There was something that just didn't flow right for me about the whole thing. |
I am so incredibly excited about 2017, this post may be a few weeks late, but it's whatever. I have so many exciting plans in 2017, I plan on bettering myself, my health, pushing myself, and stepping out of my comfort zone. 2017 is going to be the year of lots of changes, I can tell you that. This year, I have already gotten a new car, I turn 18 in a few days, I graduate high school, I move out, and to college, and so much more. I am thrilled to see all the amazing thing God is doing and will continue to do in my life. I'm not so much going to make a new years resolution, on something I want to do, but a few things I PLAN on doing and working on this year... so here they are. EAT HEALTHY. Recently this has really been weighing on me and I believe it is something that will impact the rest of my life. I know most people say this, but I honestly need to change my eating habits, I feel I am not at my highest potential physically and so changing this could really help me. WORKOUT. Again, this is another super common one, but one I have never done, and desperately need to do. Lately, I have been getting really down about myself, and the way I look, it just doesn't make me happy, so I am determined to change that. FRIENDSHIP. I have never been one to have a bunch of friends, although I always wish I had that one awesome friend group like you see on TV I have never been able to make good friends. I want a friendship that will improve me as a person, and draw me closer to god. GOD. This one is pretty big for me personally. This year I want to get a deeper and closer relationship with Him and just wholeheartedly follow and worship Him because if yall didn't know, he is sooooo awesome! Honestly, it gives me chills just talking about Him. I plan on following along with more devotionals, reading His amazing word more, and most importantly living in such a way that will honor Him. I pray everyone has an amazingly blessed year! Make sure you are following up on my Instagram to see my day to day life! |
Title: The Second Spy (The Books of Elsewhere Vol 3) Length: 6 Hours 40 minutes Synopsis:
In Olive's third adventure, what lurks below the house could be as dangerous as what's hidden inside . . .
Some terrifying things have happened to Olive in the old stone house, but none as scary as starting junior high. Or so she thinks. When she plummets through a hole in her backyard, though, she realizes two things that may change her mind: First, the wicked Annabelle McMartin is back. Second, there's a secret underground that unlocks not one but two of Elsewhere's biggest, most powerful, most dangerous forces yet. But with the house's guardian cats acting suspicious, her best friend threatening to move away, and her ally Morton starting to rebel, Olive isn't sure where to turn. Will she figure it out in time? Or will she be lured into Elsewhere, and trapped there for good? Olive has had a busy and terrifying summer just as things begin to settle down she starts school; and on the wrong foot. To top it all off not only are strange things happening at the house they seem to be following her to school as well. Suddenly Olive begins to get messages from Annabelle at school, of all places. Olive makes a promise to Morton that she is determined to keep. In the process Olive manages to fall right into one of the traps the house and Annabelle has set for her. This is a quick entertaining read. There is never a dull moment when Olive is around. Friendship is tested several times during this third installment Lexy Fridell is an excellent narrator and Jacqueline West has given her a magnificent platform to display her skills. This is a single voiced unabridged production. The differentiation between each character is distinct and makes it simple to recognize each character. Each character is brought to life threw Fridell's narration. I continue to be impressed with Fridell and her prowess as a narrator. I love that Penguin Audio has continued to keep the same narrator throughout the series. |
Standing on her own two feet and having fun, Caitlin McLaughlin is the little girl who defied the doctors. Mum Sharon was told her newborn baby would never walk, talk or see after she suffered a massive stroke in the womb that would have killed an adult. But now, aged three, Caitlin has made incredible progress and Sharon, 32, said: “Every day she amazes us even more.” Caitlin only survived because her brain was still developing and able to regenerate. She was born with an emergency forceps delivery in April 2008 and rushed to the special baby care unit at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital, London, for tests. It was then that Sharon and dad Shaun, 26, were told Caitlin had had a massive stroke and suffered severe brain damage. Sharon said: “Shaun and I just broke down in tears. They couldn’t control her seizures at first and by the time we got to the intensive care unit she was on a breathing tube.” After 15 days of treatment Caitlin was finally allowed to join her siblings James, 13, Cheyenne, 11, and Lewis, eight, at the family home in Brentford, Middlesex. And seven months later she shocked everyone by giggling. Sharon said: “It was one of the greatest moments of my life.” Next Caitlin said “mum” for the first time. Sharon said: “The doctor’s jaw dropped open and she said, ‘Oh my God, she’s not meant to be doing that.’” More tests revealed that Caitlin’s brain had adapted so the undamaged front part was processing visual signals. Sharon said: “They’d never seen that before – they were applauding in the lab.” Then, aged three, and despite suffering cerebral palsy, Caitlin got up and started to walk. Sharon said: “I just started screaming and, of course, she instantly fell over.” Now Caitlin receives specialist therapy and has some developmental delay, but Sharon is sure she’ll keep on proving everyone wrong. She said: “The doctors call her their miracle baby and so do I.” |
I was spending some time talking with God about things filling my heart right now in this season of life and He reminded me of my college exit interview. Nothing formal, just the idea of a creative person at my school He asked us about why we came to SC and what our goals where when we entered in comparison to where we were then at graduation. I went back to look at the interview and was so encouraged about how our God never changes and He is so faithful! So, here is the interview article by Ed Lowry: Who God Wants Her to Be "I was independent. I came to college secure in who I was because I grew up fast in high school, but I was still searching for something. I came to college looking at it as a journey and an adventure. I was determined to find who I was in this world and who God wanted me to be in relationship to what was in my heart. I really wanted to be informed by Him and follow His lead." Melissa Sylvester is a woman of strength, poise and character. She possesses a firm desire to work with children and to help them be the people God would have them be. "I have a strong passion for children to believe in who they are and become their own person. And women, I have a strong passion that they know whom they are and are comfortable knowing whom God has created them to be." Melissa knows whom she is in Christ and what she wants to do with her life. "I want to be a wife and a mother. I have always had a desire to do that. Having a 'career' has never really appealed to me that much. Being a mom and wife is a full-time job. Being a parent you can learn so much from your children while you teach them as well. I think it is the most significant thing you can do." Melissa experieced two important events that prepared her to meet her goals and showed her God's plan for her life. The first was deciding on a major. "I came to college going into Music Therapy for autistic children. Then I left to go to photography school in Santa Barbara. I came back to Sterling and struggled for a semester. God was simply saying to do what I loved. I had never thought of that, so I ended up with a Bachelors in Art and a minor in music." God showed Melissa how that could be incorporated into her goals and dreams of being a wife and a mother. The next significant step was the revelation that one life-long goal was going to happen sooner than she expected. "The other moment was realizing that Wesley was the one God has intended for me to marry. I never would have thought I would be married out of college. I had lots of plans and was going to Italy for art school. Things were not really working out and I couldn't understand. God was very real and revealing to me at that time." In both events she really did find more peace in knowing who she was and who God wants her to be, just as she had hoped. "The most significant thing I've learned in college is to follow God's will, He will lead. Even if you don't always understand it. It is beautiful when it comes. I look back at this interview and marvel at how God works in our lives. That interview took place about 10 years ago! I praise Him for giving me that peaceable sense of security in knowing I am His child. I am grateful that His will is best for me and I can trust it. Looking back at how God has been faithful in our lives helps us to remember that He will continue to do so. How has God been good to you? What time in your life can you stop and look back at to see His merciful hand at work on your behalf? Stop today and take some time to say "Thank you God for being oh so faithful to me." |
NEW YORK — Robert Byrne, an international grandmaster and United States chess champion who, as the chess columnist for The New York Times, analyzed top-flight matches from 1972 through 2006, the eras of Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov, died on Friday at his home in Ossining, N.Y. He was 84. The cause was Parkinson’s disease, said Joyce Dopkeen, a friend. A prodigy as a young player, Mr. Byrne was nonetheless a latecomer to the professional game. He had a career as a philosophy professor, teaching at Indiana University through most of the 1950s, and did not become a full-time chess player until he was in his 40s, by which age most top players are beyond their peak skills. Known as a cagey, patient player who favored flank attacks and solid structural defense, avoided pawn weaknesses, and was especially strong in the endgame, Mr. Byrne, as an amateur, represented the United States with distinction in international competitions. But before he turned professional in the late 1960s, perhaps his most notable game was a loss to Fischer in the 1963-64 US Championships, an annual invitation-only gathering of the nation’s strongest players. Fischer won the tournament that year with an 11-0 record, the only time in more than 100 years of the event that anyone finished without a loss or a draw, and his game with Mr. Byrne was his closest call. Indeed, the game was widely seen to be tilting in Mr. Byrne’s favor, and its grandmaster analysts had just suggested that Fischer resign, when Mr. Byrne discovered that Fischer had engineered a brilliantly disguised trap for him and that he had fallen into it. When Mr. Byrne, instead of Fischer, resigned, spectators were shocked. ‘‘Fischer’s conclusion was so neat and so profound’’ that the analysts, great players themselves, failed to see it, said the chess teacher and writer Bruce Pandolfini, who was at the match. ‘‘Byrne, to his credit, recognized it. So one of his great losses is part of chess history.’’ Mr. Byrne won his game with Fischer in the 1965-66 US Championship, though Fischer was the eventual champion. Finally, in 1972, he earned the championship, tying with two other players, Samuel Reshevsky and Lubomir Kavalek, and then winning a playoff. The victory qualified him to play in the 1973 interzonal tournament, in which he finished third, earning a slot in the eight-player tourney that would determine the next world championship challenger, rare heights for an American player. He was eliminated in the first round, however, by Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union, whom Fischer had unseated as champion in their celebrated match the previous year. As a columnist for the Times, Mr. Byrne was one of the few conduits in general-interest publications between the high-level chess world and its fans. Indeed, before the Internet made live games accessible, his column provided up-to-date information and analysis that was often not generally available, even if the chess argot was baffling to the general reader. Robert Eugene Byrne was born in Brooklyn in 1928, and graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School and Yale. He and his younger brother Donald were students of the celebrated chess teacher John W. Collins, as was Fischer. The three were among the subjects of Collins’s 1975 memoir, ‘‘My Seven Chess Prodigies.’’ Donald Byrne, like his brother, lost to Fischer in a notable game, the so-called game of the century, in 1956, when Fischer, just 13, sacrificed his queen in an exchange that ended in checkmate, propelling his rapid ascent to chess royalty. Robert Byrne gained his own fame in 1952 when he upset one of the world’s strongest players, David Bronstein, at the Chess Olympiad, a biennial international tournament, in Helsinki. But soon he turned away from chess to focus on an academic life. He graduated from Yale and earned a master’s degree from Indiana University, where he stayed on to lecture in philosophy. His return to serious chess began in the early 1960s. He won the 1960 US open championship, a tournament, unlike the US invitational championship, that attracts grandmasters and less accomplished players. He was cochampion of the event, with Pal Benko, in 1966. He earned the international grandmaster designation in 1963. Mr. Byrne’s first marriage ended in divorce. He leaves his wife, Ursula Maria Haas von Krebs, whom he married in 1971; a son, Thomas; and two grandchildren. |
Here is my card for the 8th Day of Halloween over at . The theme today is 8 Waltzing Zombies dancing around a Witches Cauldron. For this challenge we had to incorporate zombies and/or cauldrons into our project. For my card I designed a cauldron shaped card and used Betty Witch from . The bats were cut using my Spellbinder Nested Bats die. All the other bits and pieces are from my stash. |
The Māori have an idiom: See further than your eyes. Māori warriors use this tactic to bolster their spirits in preparation for battle. The idea is to take in one's surroundings and draw strength from the deeper meaning of some objects. For instance, I can look out the window and see Birddog parked under the tree - just a truck parked under a tree. But, for me, it's a symbol of freedom - I draw strength from that freedom. The sky isn't just the sky, but a symbol of the vastness of this universe, and a reminder to me that while I am merely an insignificant speck in all the flotsam, there is an infinite interconnectedness that makes me part of a bigger picture. Think pointilism - take away a single dot from a Seurat painting, and the entire picture suffers the loss. I draw strength from that sense of union. When people (those brave and privileged few) walk into my studio, they see a desk cluttered with stuff - computer equipment, ink pads, stamps, containers holding colored pens and pencils of various sorts, glues, tape, glitter, books, notepads, brushes, and tools. My focus always lands on an old enamel tin cup that holds a collection of markers. It's the cup that Grandma brought with her on the boat. I draw strength from it as a symbol of courage - the courage that comes in facing the unknown, in taking a chance on what may be rather than what is. I also see, and draw strength from, an ancestory of tenacious individuals that has lent itself to my existence - the dots in the painting that made way for my dot. Ultimately, I draw strength from another woman who never gave up; a woman who met everything in life, good or bad, with a bemused "Vell, vhat you gonna do?" Take a look around you today. See further than your eyes. Find a symbol of strength outside yourself from which you can draw and nourish your inner warrior. Make it a daily practice - I plan to.
Kia kaha. |
T is such an outdoor girl. She loves to be outside at every opportunity, which is fine by me, as i love being outside too. Especially on hot - but not too hot - days. Say, under 35 degrees. We loved this little cubby house when we first inspected our house to buy - it's so lovely to see our little girl enjoying it too. I relax more about her playing in there since I bought some good strong red-back spider spray to keep the creepy crawlies out. She knows that Mummy doesn't like spiders and seems to feel the same way! This is my little potted mint plant that has survived almost as long as we've been here. The only new plant, I believe, that has! She loves to pick it and eat some every time she goes past. DH is asking her not to eat too much, in the hope that some will be left! We're too scared to admit to his parents that all the plant clippings they've given us have gone to plant heaven. |
SPROUTING BROCCOLI: Our new favorite plant on the farm. It seems to handle the temperature swings better than most of our other cool season (ha!) crops. No need for trimming, just chop it up or eat it whole, it is wonderfully tender. ASPARAGUS: Enjoy it while it lasts! LETTUCE: Usually we pick the lettuce the day before it goes to our CSA members, but the heat sent us in to save the last of the crops out of the high tunnel before they cooked. Some of their outer leaves are tip-burned. If you tear that part off, there's still a good amount of juicy center. SWISS CHARD: One of our favorite greens to add to almost any dish. This first picking from the field is very tender and fresh. RADISHES AND TURNIPS: The heat has turned them spicy, so we recommend a quick stir fry. If you are eating them fresh a little salt can help with any bitterness. KALE: A first picking here too, these leaves are ready for your recipes. CILANTRO AND DILL: The herb bunches this week are a lush as anything we have every grown. This abundance calls for making a dip, heavy on the greenery. To 16oz of sour cream add 3/4 cup chopped herbs, 2 tbsp oil, salt and pepper. Good with raw sprouting broccoli. The heat is on! It takes a toll on the cool season crops like lettuce. This week's lettuce has been under shade cloth for the past week as we attempt to hold it for the CSA shares. Butterhead lettuce and 90 degree temperatures don't mix so good. While the Spring wilts away, Summer is in the ground and growing. All of the first round of hot weather crops are in: tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, squash, okra, tomatillos and eggplant thanks to the hands of many. Speaking of farm hands, Tom and I wanted to give a shoutout to Semra Fetahovic, who apprenticed on the farm in 2015 and has returned to work with us for the next month. Semra is set to complete her Masters in Organic Agriculture at a German university. When not helping with turnip picking, she is helping us with our Instagram feed and ferment sales. Check out the Instagram stories from today at fairsharefarm! |
The chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Israel was brought in for questioning for several hours by police Thursday after suspicions arose he was involved in pocketing donation money. In a statement released by his lawyers, Chief Rabbi denied the allegations against him. The Rishon Letzion Magistrates Court remanded Thursday night for several days of three of Metzgers associates also arrested in the case, including Metzger’s driver and aide. Earlier Thursday, members of the financial crimes unit of the police raided Metzger’s home and office Thursday afternoon after a two-month undercover investigation into suspicions that he was involved in fraud, theft, money laundering and bribe-taking. “The Chief Rabbi today was summoned for questioning, held and interrogated for several hours. Rabbi Metzger answered all the questions and he denies the allegations against him,” said his lawyers in response to the arrest. Metzger was questioned under caution by the unit for several hours. The court remanded Metzger’s aide , head of the non-profit, will be held for six days and , head of the Tzedaka V’Mishpat non-profit, for seven days. According to details of the investigation released to the media, police suspect Metzger was given hundreds of thousands of shekels by various nonprofits, which he pocketed or distributed to family members. Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein and state prosecutor Moshe Lador both signed off on the raid earlier Thursday, allowing it to go ahead. Police confiscated several papers, computers and other property belonging to Metzger, and froze bank accounts under his name. “We were surprised to see this arrest,” said a spokesman for Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, who added that Amar was praying that the charges will be baseless. “In every case, each person is presumed to be innocent until proven otherwise,” he added. A member of Metzger’s family said that the affair “fell on my head like a bolt out of the blue.” He had heard the arrest from news reports, he told Ynet News. “We have no idea what it is about and we all hope this affair will end in nothing,” he added. Metzger was questioned in 2005 over suspicions that he took bribes from a Jerusalem hotel, but the case was closed for lack of evidence. His 10-year term is nearly at an end and he is due to step down once a new chief rabbi is chosen in the coming months. |
From BBC Radio 4, 2nd July: The columnist Jonathan Freedland, writing about the recent riots and upheavals in Iran, made a very interesting observation in yesterday's Guardian. "Seven years ago" he wrote "Bush cast Iran as the axis of evil, a faraway, abstract place clothed in black and bent on destruction. Now the world's people have seen that Iranians have a human face." Freedland goes on to argue that, having seen the human face of the Iranian people, the old style belligerence of the United States has become all but impossible. This connection between moral obligation and the human face is one that was extensively explored by that great twentieth century philosopher and Talmudic scholar Emmanuel Levinas. Famously, Levinas argued that: "To see a face is already to hear: 'Thou shalt not kill." For Levinas, the concrete human encounter with the face of the other is the basis for all moral obligation. Simply put, in its nakedness and vulnerability, the human face cries out not be be harmed. It might be assumed that behind Levinas's moral philosophy is that thought that the face of the other introduces moral responsibility because it reveals that the other is, at base, just like us. That, in terms of Freedland's article, a war between Iran and the US is less likely because the US people now recognize how much they have in common with the people of Iran. This may be Freedland's point, but it's not what Levinas is saying. On the contrary, Levinas argues that the face of the other is indeed other, that it has an irreducible mystery, a certain something that cannot be collapsed back to me or stuff about me. Too much of the time, Levinas argues, we try to reduce uncomfortable difference back into things that we understand and feel comfortable with, forever translating difference into familiar sameness. In the Bible our moral obligations are supremely to the stranger, to the person who is different to me. What is so challenging about Levinas is that he demands we take seriously the sheer otherness of the other. And indeed, for Levinas, this is just as important when thinking about God. For with God we are constantly seeking to retranslate God's otherness back into comfortable immanence, making God all about me and my life. But the inscrutible God who appears in the burning bush or the cloudy mountain top ought not to be so easily requisitioned by my own needs. Against the tide of popular assumptions for which everything is returned to the familiar, always defined in terms that centre my culture and my understanding, Levinas posits the enigmatic and the mysterious, the genuinely different and supremely other. This is the face of the stranger. And this is the face that cries out and pleads: 'do not harm me'. Rev. Dr. Giles Fraser |
I will have more pictures soon, but I wanted to post about our vacation. We had such a great time last week in Hilton Head. The weather could've cooperated a little more (thank you SubTropical Storm Andrea), but the villa where we stayed was amazing and Friday's weather was perfect.
Haleigh was a great traveller the first day driving, but woke up with a sour stomach the 2nd day and was pretty miserable until we arrived at the beach. Then she didn't want anything to do with the sand or the water, or really anything at all until it was her own idea. Her excitement over the whole trip caused her to have some stomach issues (read: the worst diapers I've ever dealt with), and she has apparently realized that she is two years old (meaning she now screams incessantly for what she wants). But at least she slept great, so though I was stuck at the condo with her most of the week, I was able to sneak out and enjoy some sun on the balcony overlooking the pool and beach.
Friday the storm moved south so we had perfect sunny weather to enjoy the pool and beach. Another little girl was in the baby pool, finally convincing Haleigh to get in and have fun. Once we conquered that, we all walked down to the beach and she played with sand for a bit with me on the towels. My parents returned from playing in the surf and told me to just start walking down that way; Haleigh would follow me. Sure enough, after a week of hating the sand and the shells and everything about the beach, she walked barefoot in the sand all the way down to the tidal pool. I took her out into the surf with me where she would eagerly watch the waves and say, "Here comes another one!" so I'd jump as it hit us and she'd just squeal and laugh because it was so fun.
Soon I couldn't carry her anymore, so she sat on my lap in the warm water of a tidal pool for a good 20 minutes, just talking about the sand and the shells we could see. She fell in love with some hermit crabs in a little shop in town so she's convinced that all shells have "a crab in it."
Saturday we ended up blowing right past our motel room reserved in Virginia, choosing to not stop for the night and driving straight through to get home. Haleigh handled the ride home extremely well, and we only had to watch
Monsters Inc.
and
Happy Feet
once each.
We relaxed Sunday, then went grocery shopping and to the park, where I was reminded again that I do in fact have a 2 year old. It literally took me 10 minutes to get her back into her carseat once my 6.5 month pregnant self chased her down off the playground equipment. She screamed the whole drive home, all the way up to the apartment, and all through her bath.
As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote:
There was a little girl
And she had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead,
When she was good,
She was very, very good
And when she was bad she was horrid. |
Central Market, Varna Located on D-r Piskiuliev street, the Central Market is the largest street market in Varna. All year round you can buy here the freshest fruit and vegetables, as well as cheap footwear and clothes, produced mainly in Turkey. There are also some great stores nearby where you can find quality jewelry. Look out for the famous fish store selling fresh fish from the Black Sea. This sight is featured in a self-guided walking tour in the iOS app " Varna Map and Walks " on iTunes App Store or the Android app " Varna Map and Walks " on Google Play. Please download the app for travel directions for visiting this sight. The app turns your mobile device to a personal tour guide and it works offline (so no data plan is needed). Walking Tours in Varna, Bulgaria |
this blog contained a post about a bill to eliminate the American Communities Survey (ACS) altogether . Basically that bill would eliminate some funding within the Commerce Department, and would effectively repeal the Census of Agriculture, the Economic Census, the Census of Governments, and American Communities Survey. In additional it would largely limit the function of the Census Bureau to conducting the "short form" decennial census once every ten years, thereby eliminating data collected on poverty, education, income, and basically anything other than age and race. A second bill has now been introduced that would make the ACS voluntary, instead of the current law which makes response mandatory. Effectively the data that would be collected would only come from those willing to share that information, making the data in essence worthless from an analytical standpoint. This would be especially true for small areas such as counties, cities, towns and villages. This bill can be read at Library of Congress website |
It has come that time where I begin thinking how much I am going to miss this dearly. By this I mean all of this. I’m going to miss my new friends and coworkers at work. I am going to miss my roommates, this wonderful house we got to live in, my neighbors Kenny & Laura, Laura’s kids, and even their pregnant dog Serenity. But I AM REALLY GOING TO MISS OAKLAND!! The thought that even after I come back to visit Oakland to in the future, I will never live in this house again, or probably walk down West Grand and turn onto Brush street. This last week and a half is everything and more to me. Words can’t explain how much this experience has meant to me. I am content with my experience, and I am content with the change and development that has occurred over the last month and a half. I am so overwhelmed with the joys of life, yet also with the needed changes and problems that exist. I just finished my freshmen year and feel so empowered by what life has presented to me. Sometimes it all feels like a dream, but I must say this passion and vision that I feel so strongly about has grown deeper since being here. I am so grateful for this experience. Not only has it kept me determine to change the system that we live in, but reflect on who I am as an individual. These last few days I had the opportunity to go out and protest. I’m sure we all heard about the verdict of Trayvon Martin. For me this is of no surprise because Trayvon is one of the many individuals who lost their life and received no justice. We just so happen to be lucky enough to hear it on television or the radio because many other individuals did not even get that much. I asked myself all this week over and over “How do you live with this? What do I do? Kenna, when are you going to say enough is enough? What is this world coming to? How do I take out my anger in a positive way”? I guess I am fed up. It disgusts me that I live in a world where I share the same air as these animals that run the system. The fact that it took even this long to come to a verdict. I wouldn’t be surprised if they knew the verdict, but just wanted to buy some time to actually make people think it was actually some thinking going on in the court. I do not know if I was more angry with this case or the amount of ignorance I heard and seen after the verdict. Either way, I refuse to sit down anymore. I don’t want to see something like this happen again ever. So on Sunday I decided to come out to the protest in Oakland, which for the most was empowering. On Monday, my roommates and I decided to protest with my roommates. It was inspirational and we protested on a freeway. I felt so much of an adrenaline rush as I spoke out for a tremendous cause. As much as negativity I have been given for doing this, I won’t let it stop me because I know it is nothing but a great way to advocate. When I get back to school, were going to advocate about it on campus and within my club. How else is our system suppose to change? The system is ridiculous and racist. I refuse to complain about the system anymore without changing it. Sitting around and doing nothing, that is exactly what the system expect. I won’t let the system run me again, therefore I am acting out against it. Acting for a cause has been one of the greatest experiences of my life. I cant believe this is the second to last time I will be blogging. I remember the first day I walked in this house and was not sure what to expect. I guess that’s the beauty of life though, expecting the unexpected. Never would have thought this internship would have impacted my life, my world, and my individual self. With as much as I have experienced, I feel so much older than just a soon to be sophomore in college. It’s amazing how you can get so much out of life living simplicity. In our reading for today, there was a quote that said: “Voluntary simplicity involves both inner and outer condition. It means singleness of purpose, sincerity, and honesty within, as well as avoidance of exterior clutter, of many possessions irrelevant to the chief purposes of life”. This really stood out to me because I have such a difficult time with this in my personal life and trying to live beyond my means. Honestly, you need none of that to be filled with life and joy. This protest was a perfect example how I joined the community for an important cause without a slide of my debit card or a checkout line. At the same time, I felt great about it. I felt it took being in Oakland for me to realize and remember the type of world I came from. Also the realization of not forgetting where you come from because it can easily be forgotten. This reading only reiterated that into my mind. Simplicity, it’s so simple but so powerful. |
"Abandoned by their mother when just a few days old after their den was disturbed, these three fox cubs seem to find comfort in a Basil Brush lookalike. The cuddly toy and a teddy bear are helping to rehabilitate the cubs at the East Sussex Wildlife Rescue and Ambulance Service. Trevor Weeks, who runs the animal rescue service, said: “The vixen shot out of a hole and disappeared when some builders started lifting up sections of a concrete patio. They then found the three cubs hidden away. “Once we had checked them over we returned them to the patio and put them on a special heat pad to keep them warm in the hope that their mother would come back. “We sat in the kitchen of the house all night watching to see if she would return. She did come but it was very stormy and she was quite young and very spooked and frightened and did not take them.” Animal rescue volunteer, hairdresser Monica Russell, takes the cubs to work with her at the Definitions salon in Hailsham." I have commented on-line as follows: "I missed this yesterday. My wife drew it to my attention. We both believe it to be a charming piece. The Times is to be commended for carrying it. The Tories are to be condemned for planning to bring back fox hunting. Shame on them." |
Okay, so I've been a bit MIA lately. But I've been reading! Well, and working too. So I have lots of reviews I need to post. But first, something I just had to share. My dad has an obsession with the website, I Can Has Cheezburger . He's always sending me amusing "library cats" that I can post on my wallpaper at work. Here's my favorite one so far. My goal for the day is to change the background on every computer at our reference desks to my cat background. Ridiculous, I know...but it amuses me. Kinda like Maureen Johnson and her ! Though I have yet to take it to her level of lemur insanity... Anyways, I recently was introduced to another site that's not as great as Cheezburger, but it had this awesome picture that I know you will enjoy! The caption was "Heavy Reading." All I can say is--thank goodness they didn't add Breaking Dawn to the stack. The poor cat would have been crushed :-) |
Today I had cut an orange, washed strawberries and blueberries and left strawberry hulls, etc. on the breadboard. I was talking to Gilmore Girl on the phone when Phil came in the kitchen, looked at the breadboard and said, "Why didn't you clean up your mess?" I had to answer the phone," I said. "Hey," Gilmore Girl said, "You called me!" A friend,
who shall remain nameless
, gave me this card today. I want it read at my funeral, which I hope won't be for a lo-o-o-o-ng time. But first I want to live up to it. I'm sharing it with you because so many of you are peach-pit-planting people, too. ~A story About You~ Who in their life hasn't planted a peach pit just hoping that somehow a seedling would grow? And then they move on to some other adventure, and if it comes up--well, they don't even know. That's one way of picturing your style of living. You've planted ideas and dreams unaware. You've noticed somebody who's heart need attention and planted a positive feeling in there. It's part of your nature. You may not remember the kind and encouraging things that you've done.... But everywhere, "peach pits" are growing like crazy. and people are blooming. (I know it--I'm one.) To my forever friend, And this unnamed friend brought me exquisite flowers, right out of her garden. And she took me to lunch. She often calls and says, "What are you doing?" I know that I'm in for an adventure as she has something up her sleeve--and it's not her arm. Thank you, my unnamed friend. You are my peach pit friend, too. We have all had peach-pit-planting friends in our lives. Some of them were our own mothers. Some are our sisters. Occasionally they might even be our brothers. Some are friends who have come and gone but we are changed forever because of their kindness. We are stronger. Have more compassion for others. Better know our strengths because they were so generous to tell us what they are. Sometimes they had to shout to us to make sure we heard. Occasionally there may have been shaking involved. Sometimes they planted a peach pit in a note or, in this day and age, in an email. I got one last week from an old friend. I had forgotten some of the things mentioned but was happy to be reminded. I think sometimes we have family and friends who are shouting encouraging words from beyond the veil. We just can't hear them but we occasionally feel them near. I feel friendships from my blogging friends, some of whom I have never met. One such friend sent me six beautiful collectible dishes. How do you repay such kindness? I treasure most of all her encouraging words. To all my friends, old and new, found and lost, I thank you. My peach tree is growing because of you. And bearing fruit, and it's delicious. |
From the popular EWTN TV and radio personality comes a to-do list that's just divine.
Scripture tells us only God knows the desires of our hearts. It was, after all, God who placed them there because they are designed to lead us to His will for our lives. Why, then, is it so challenging at times to figure out if we are on the right track when it comes to what we believe we want or need? God's Bucket List will examine what God wants for each of us: mercy, fruitfulness, fellowship, and peace, just to name a few, and will explain what the Christian faith teaches about these gifts and how we can begin to achieve and cross out, one by one, the items on that heavenly list. Do you have a bucket list, an itinerary of things you want to do before you die? Really, I'm not sure where to begin on Teresa Tomeo's as there is so much that makes this a good read. From her personal journey from being career driven to beginning a relationship with God, really there are just so many angles of this book that interested me. So, in typical 'me' fashion I'm just going to type from my heart and see where my thoughts lead me. As you've probably gathered over the last two years, I really enjoy reading books that make me think beyond myself and ones that force me to look deep within myself to see where I stand. So, you can imagine that I would be interested in reading and seeing what God was trying to tell me from the pages of this book. Sometimes, I need to read something to finally hear something He's been trying to say: like maybe that I should occasionally take it slow and just be-"l'arte di non fare niente" (The art of doing nothing). Beyond how the book makes you want to step back and seeing what God has planned for you, what really made this an easy read is Ms. Tomeo's writing style and how open she was about her own journey and the inspiration that she found after taking an interest in discovering her faith and what exactly it is that the Church teaches. One of the chapters that I found most interesting, mainly because it is something that I've noticed a lot of Catholic Christians struggle with (though something I've never struggled with) was how she came to terms with the truth on why abortion and contraceptives are not really women's health, like, the media would have you believe. I know, such a hot button issue to be discussing here, but I think there are so many people who are misinformed when it comes to why the Church, and myself, stand against it. It was just a fascinating (for lack of a better word) chapter because it so clearly shows what Pope Paul VI said so very long ago (way, way before I was even born), and, when taken in the context of Ms. Tomeo's story and her own discovery of the truth on the Church's teaching on these subjects is what really makes that chapter worth reading. My second favorite chapter was the one Live the Good Life , why, because life is meant to be lived with joy and love. I really have no words for why this was a good chapter, it just is. Kind of one of those that reminds you to be present in the present and not regretting yesterday or fretting over what tomorrow will bring. It was just one of those chapters that speaks to each in different ways. Heavy subject aside, I really think y'all will enjoy because we could all use some time to step back and listen to what God is trying to tell us rather than telling him what we think we need. I for one will be going back through this book and going through some of the resources that she mentioned. Again, I've become distracted in my thoughts.... Teresa Tomeo's writing is not only easy to read but thought provoking as you follow her through her journey to a deeper relationship with the God. I just really enjoyed how easily this book caught my attention and had me looking within myself to take the time to listen. Thought provoking and humorous, this book speaks to life and all the paths one takes. My mind is really still mulling this one over. |
a rather productive day, and a good day to blog, I thought, well, why not? I'm up to my elbows in a new(old) book and am loving its squelchiness. The words are sloshing around nicely thank you very much, and some of them are even splattering onto this poor neglected blog. There's a picture of the dear creature below should you have forgotten him. I'm promising to feed him, and even get him a new pair of pants. Soon enough he should look like this. What a merry old fellow. Blog coming to your door. |
22"x30" Mixed media on paper Here it is, one big cup of coffee! Not an itty bitty or little painting, but a bigger painting although not huge, it is bigger. Two more are on the easel and should be coming along soon hopefully, before the end of this year! |
weekends are for lots of things. sometimes those things that weekends are for include sunshine on the water. or hikes with red-haired friends through green trees. or hot chocolate with friends that warms your belly and your soul. remember these things. remember when you are happy and experience joy and the things that act as a balm to the hurting places in your heart. they are good. |
I have just returned from a week at the Edinburgh Festival. The Fringe is a wondrous and eclectic thing, encompassing so many different performances with something for everyone, done by almost everyone. Nevertheless, I do feel there should be a a rule that no one is allowed to perform in white face or wear a basque and wiggle about it in it 'seductively' in the manner of an am-dram 18th century trollop. Top hat wearing should similarly be banned. Enough already! Basque wearers notwithstanding (and they are not all women let me tell you), there's always something interesting to see as you walk down the Royal Mile, where people desperate to get you into their show press their leaflets in to your hand. Or don't! On the one hand I found myself exasperated by the sheer volume of flyers in my bag and felt compelled to thank the giver and make noises about hoping to see their show 'Antiques Roadshow: The Musical'. Yet I also felt strangely insecure if I noticed someone handing flyers to everyone and then not to me. 'What's wrong with me?' I thought. Am I too old or uncool to see their show? Am I not suitably arty-farty? I'm with my kids, am I too mumsy? On the whole though I spent the day dodging people with flyers. Some flyers seemed destined for ubiquity, particularly that for Bedales School production of 'Oedipus Rex', even turning up mysteriously in our bathroom. Indeed the whole production haunted me as I bumped into the cast on a daily basis crossing the road on their way to the theatre. It is very odd to see a Greek chorus, Oedipus with blood running down his face and his mum/girlfriend waiting for the green light , looking incongrously fresh and jolly. Having perused their flyer however, I decided I would, ahem, rather poke my own eyes out with a stick than see the play. It's as much fun watching the potential audience as the players and I found myself idly playing 'what production are you going to?' Visiting a cafe I stood in front of a young man in the queue wearing a Jethro Tull T shirt and sporting the requisite pointy beard. I half expected him to produce a flute and start doing a pixie dance and singing about elven maids etc. No surprise then to discover there was a Terry Pratchett play on round the corner (this last is indicative of my prejudiced view of Jethro Tull fans and should not be taken as an insightful remark although I am right of course). It was a week of contrasts with highlights including Piff the Magic Dragon doing astonishing magic tricks and making us laugh, Pete Firman's suit, a man doing amazing physical stunts using a hula hoop, Colin Hoult's hilarious surreal comedy and John Otway singing 'Crazy Horses'.
The nadir though was being bullied into shouting 'I is a African!' in response to a particularly cringeworthy rap on evolution. I tried to move my lips as economically as possible and was glad when Flora pronounced herself bored giving me a perfect excuse to slip out. This was closely followed by Flora being concussed by a beam that fell on top of her at a venue. Still it wouldn't be fun if we didn't have at least one thing to moan about although potential serious injury is perhaps going a little far. |
Rotherham have appointed Alan Stubbs as the club's new manager. The 44-year-old quit Hibernian to take over at the New York Stadium after two years north of the border. Stubbs' guided Hibs to the Scottish Cup last month with a thrilling victory over Rangers but failed to lead them back to the Premiership. He has agreed a three-year deal with the Championship club following Neil Warnock's departure. Warnock left Rotherham after masterminding an incredible survival push which saw the Millers go 11 games unbeaten. Stubbs will be joined at Rotherham by John Doolan, who worked under him at Hibs. He had been linked with the Blackburn job while a return to Everton had also been discussed but he has moved to the Yorkshire outfit. Will Alan Stubbs keep Rotherham up next season? 0+ VOTES SO FAR |
I made this noodle dish about a year ago and was craving it today based on memory. I could clearly remember the flavors and textures of this dish even though it had been that long. Tonight's version clearly reminded me that I need to make this more frequently than once a year. The dish was basically cooked spaghetti dressed with a sauce full of complex flavors made with ingredients I always have on hand. The addition of blanched broccoli, sliced red and yellow peppers and sliced scallions just brought the dish to another level. I simply garnished the noodles with roasted peanuts. The original recipe called for honey in the sauce but I simply substituted agave nectar for the honey since today is my Vegan Thursday. Szechuan Noodles (Serves 3-4) 1 broccoli crown, divided into florets 3 garlic cloves, chopped 1 1/2 tablespoon fresh ginger, peeled and chopped 1/4 cup vegetable oil 1/4 cup tahini (sesame paste) 1/4 cup smooth peanut butter 1/4 cup good soy sauce 1 1/2 tablespoon dry sherry 1 1/2 tablespoon sherry vinegar 1 1/4 tablespoon agave nectar 1/4 teaspoon hot chili oil 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper Pinch of ground cayenne pepper 1/2 red bell pepper, julienned 1/2 yellow bell pepper, julienned 2 scallions, sliced diagonally (white and green parts) Peanuts (optional) for garnish Blanch the broccoli florets in boiling, salted water for 2 minutes. Drain and rinse in cold water to set the color. Place the garlic and ginger in a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Add the vegetable oil, tahini, peanut butter, soy sauce, sherry, sherry vinegar, honey, chili oil, sesame oil, and ground peppers. Puree the sauce. Meanwhile cook spaghetti in boiling salted water to al dente following package directions. Drain the pasta in a colander, place it in a large bowl, and while still warm, toss with three-quarters of the sauce. Add the red and yellow bell peppers, scallions and blanched broccoli; toss well Serve warm or at room temperature. The remaining sauce may be added, as needed, to moisten the pasta. Adapted from Barefoot Contessa Cookbook I give this recipe 4 spoons! |
It was weeks ago, but I am still studying the photos of some of the quilts I saw at VQF. The festival has not yet been updated, but it should have this year's winners and all the contest quilts up eventually. Here are a few of my favorites. I was looking hard at border designs, especially appliqued ones, and I just love the red and white "infinite variety" quilt. The setting was so unique! |
Yesterday as we were hiking into the forest preserve, we had a momentary snake encounter. The creature slipped away so fast I wasn't able to identify it. Snakes are a charismatic group that inspire awe, horror and everything in between. They play central roles in myth and legend for pretty much every culture I've interacted with. In Costa Rica, the campesinos (farmers) say that every time you encounter a viper you are born again, because you have looked into the face of death and survived. I like to tell my students that story, whenever they are frightened by a snake. Our snake encounter got us talking about animals and what they symbolize. Audrianna and Danielle were curious to know whether I use animals my novel EOLYN. (Everyone on NAPIRE knows about my novel by now, because I've been making cheap plugs for it all summer.) And yes, I do. My interest in animal behavior has always run parallel with my interest in animals and animal symbolism. I've read countless legends about animals from many different cultures, to the point that often I don't remember anymore where the different stories came from. But they turn up in EOLYN in subtle ways, such that every animal that appears in the book (and there are a lot of them!) carries a meaning or message, no matter how small. In Eolyn's world, one of the gifts of Middle Magic is the ability to communicate with animals. Now, my novel does not have talking animals as you might find in a children's book where, say, a lion is fluent in English. Mages and magas do not 'hear' animals speak as you and I can hear each other. But they learn to read the ways in which animals communicate: their calls, their gestures, their responses to certain situations, and so forth. Magas and mages also interpret the appearance of certain animals as having special meaning. Very little of this is explicit in my novel, but it forms part of the underlying fabric of magical knowledge that makes up Eolyn's world. Seeing a snake in the forest always makes my heart skip a beat, but I've never had a snake encounter that does not inspire avid conversation afterwards, both in the retelling of the event, and in all the ideas that retelling generates. So while I have an instinctive fear of snakes, I respect them, and I think they give something to us in their own way. A rush of adrenaline, if nothing else, that spurs us to embrace life anew. In honor of yesterday's snake encounter, I'm posting a short scene I wrote once that features a bushmaster. You can read it by clicking . Warning - this scene is not for the faint of heart! |
is a series of spinoffs to the franchise, whose stories are modeled after classic literature, with Sonic and friends as main characters of the story.So far, two entries in the series have been released on Sonic and the Secret Rings (2007), based on 1001 Nights: Came about due to the time issues with attempting to port Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) for the Nintendo Wii, in time for launch.
Sonic and the Black Knight (2009), based on the legend of King Arthur. --- Tropes present in both titles include: Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Sonic's snarky attitude was more emphasized in both Storybook games than in his other game portrayals. Tropes exclusive to Black Knight: --- |
The Great Quest West is a series recounting the two-week road trip my brother and I took this August through eight of the most western states. Utah is something else entirely. The state ranges from red rocks to torrential downpours, forests to flash floods, hot temperatures to rainbows. We begin our drive to Sedona via scenic Route 12, which eventually led us to Bryce Canyon, but we didn’t want to pay another $30 entrance fee so we continued to Page, Arizona for our first pit stop. I almost flipped the car over swerving in to the hidden campground, but we finally found a spot and set up the tent. It was about a two-hour drive south to blazing hot Phoenix where we pick our second rental car, a blue compact Hyundai. We left the Chevy in the parking lot of the only person we know who would live in Phoenix. The temperature was skirting 115 degrees and we shuffled hungrily to a health food cafe with $6 acai bowls. New Mexico has a lot less desert than I expected, but we got to experience our fair share of thunderstorms and torrential downpours while crossing in to the mountain time zone. We compromised our uncertain Santa Fe campgrounds for a motel in Albuquerque after a small taste of Mexican at a hole in the wall restaurant on a desolate residential street. We booked it to Santa Fe’s nearest Starbuck so Jordan could stream the Chelsea game from his cell phone while I explore the quite city. The aesthetic was a monotone array of adobe buildings and a Sunday Farmer’s Market where local craftsman sell their silver and turquoise. After Chelsea lost we drove out to Gabriel’s Mexican restaurant for some of the best Mexican food I’ve ever had. I’ve dreamt of White Sands for months after haphazardly coming across a photo on the Internet. Endless bright white dunes reflected the hundred degree heat, pending radiation poisoning and almost instantly setting on dehydration. I was determined to set foot in Texas so I dragged Jordan to El Paso. We walked around a deserted mall and had a drink at the only open bar in the foreseeable distance, apart from the drive through with vacuum sealed margaritas next door. As the sunset I waved goodbye to the Mexican border. Sometimes I wonder if we really are our own worst critic or if maybe our creations aren’t as great as we think they are. I know that every individual I meet considers me differently than the next, but wouldn’t you love to know in unfiltered honesty. These thoughts string along with others in a forest in the middle of a desolate South West. Currently we set up camp in a little mountain town called Cloudcroft in western New Mexico. I hear a French family play with their dog and children on top of the hill above us in a Cruise America RV. Earlier this morning we left El Paso behind as we traveled the furthest east to Carlsbad Cavern. The cave was a mile below the surface. We were transported to the 56 degrees enclave via elevator shaft that dropped in approximately one minute. The natural architecture looked like wet drops of stone falling to the ground and frozen into honey-like mounds. We wandered the untouchable cavern for half an hour adjusting to the deafening silence and unexpected textures around every corner. We left the chill a mile below and made our way back to Phoenix for our now beloved Chevy. Already dreaming of my next road trip… I can now officially say I’ve experienced an authentic storm. In the middle of the night we were abruptly woken by flashes of lightning and amplified thunder. We counted six miles distance and the rain drenched our thin tent. Slightly terrified and decently delirious I vaguely remembered something I learned in science about the danger of lightning, metal, and sand. Granted we were in a metal-poled tent on a packed sand camp site threatened by the sky. Eventually the storm began to fade and the small dose of adrenaline faded and so did I. We drove early, nearly six hours plus to arrive in our night stop of Tuscon, Jordan’s short-lived stomping grounds his freshman year of college. We saw a movie for a meek $5 and snuck in to another, in order to escape the triple-digit heat. By six we were on an hour drive north toward Phoenix at a deserted desert campgrounds complete with gravel, cacti, rainbow sunsets, tarantula-sized grasshoppers, scorpions, natural sweat lodges, and freight trains passing on the either side of the highway off the 10. I prefer camping in the mountains that’s for sure. I also take camping over motels. There’s something ironically comforting of being away from home. A free, lively, creative, ambition lies outside the confides of a treacherous city bubble. |
Horse Heads I had the pleasure of watching Werner Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” last week, at the Transylvania International Film Festival. It’s really nice having a pretty large film festival in your hometown. For his documentary, Herzog got a special permission from the French authorities to film in Chauvet Cave. The cave contains the oldest paintings known to man ( aprox. 30.000 years old) and one of the most famous of them is the “Panel of the Horses”. I don’t have access to the shots from the actual film, but I do have this picture of it (via wikipedia). When I saw it, it instantly reminded me of another great film I once saw at the film festival a few years before, “My Winnipeg”. And yes, you should watch My Winnipeg. My jaw was locked in the ‘drop’ position the whole film. And don’t let the above image scare you, the film will actually make you smile. |
This past weekend was so amazing to me. I am sure most of you thought I was taking a vacation from blogging. I wasn't really. I was actually in Phoenix AZ attending a Time Out For Women event. It was Amazing! Seriously!! I left feeling so uplifted and filled. I want to share a little with you. There is no way that I can do the entire conference justice, but I can and will try to give you my favorite talks from it. The first speaker was Virginia Hinckley Pierce. Let me just say that no matter what you have heard about her, it wasn't nearly good enough. I loved her talk. She talked about success and how good women always have a desire to know if they are succeeding in life. She talked about using two questions to determine success. The first is: Have I trusted Christ? And the second question is: Have I used the atoning sacrifice enough to help build His kingdom? "Growth comes as we constantly try to achieve that that is just slightly out of reach". Gordon B Hinckley We can tell if we are achieving success in our lives because of two things. This is the part of the talk that I loved because it gave me hope that I might be on the right track. The first way is that we are beginning to lose our disposition to do evil. This means, as we become more successful, that our very desires change. We desire to be less like the world, and more like Him. The second way to tell if we are starting to become successful is: Are we beginning to see things as heavenly Father and Jesus Christ see them? Are we beginning to hear His voice instead of the voice of the world? So, when we look at the world around us, are we looking with eyes of judgement, or eyes of love? Are we seeing the world at it's best, or our worst? Peace, Joy and hope are available to all those who learn to measure success properly. She also talked about our propensity to compare ourselves to each other. We need to get completely out of the business of comparison. When you are comparing, you can always find somebody that has it better than you do, and somebody else that has it worse. Comparison doesn't make sense. It is a way of distorting the "facts" and highlighting the fiction. Success is not about how many children you have, how much money you make, whether you are a stay at home mom or whether you need to hold down a job to help support your family. Success is not measured by what callings you have held, or how many of your children went through the temple. In the manual "Preach my Gospel" the missionaries are counseled to "Avoid comparing yourself to other missionaries and comparing their outward results to yours". Your success is measured more accurately by your commitment. Your willingness to teach people, and your willingness to love people. When we go to the Temple to make covenants, we don't ever answer for our children, we don't answer for our husbands. We only answer for ourselves. At some point we are all accountable for our own decisions. She told of a conference that she was speaking at. One of the sisters was driving her to the airport and they had a wonderful visit. Partway there, the sister turned to her and said, "I feel so bad that the Lord doesn't trust me". When asked what she meant by that, this good sister replied, "I have never been in a presidency"
Sister Pierce than said, "A bishop is not more valued over a Sunday school teacher". A primary president is not more valued than a nursery leader". "Callings are not a marker of success". Whoa, I really had to think about that one for a minute. But my heart was singing and knew the answer long before I really heard the question. I have learned that the promptings of the Holy Ghost will tell you how you stand before God. You will know where you are and what you need to do. Success is trusting Christ and using His atoning sacrifice to become more like Him. Sister Pierce ended by quoting a couple of verses from the hymn,"Come Let Us Anew" O that each in the day of His coming may say, I have fought my way through; I have finished the work Thou didst give me to do! O that each from his Lord may receive the glad word, Well and faithfully done! Enter into My joy, and sit down on My throne! Enter into My joy, and sit down on My throne ! Sing, O heavens; and be joyful, O earth; and break forth into singing, O mountains: for the Lord hath comforted his people, and will have mercy upon his afflicted. |
So interviews for me aren't a common occurence, but I figured I like reading interviews with favourite authors (and movie stars, it has to be said) and learning a couple of nuggets of info I'd otherwise never know. Who knows - you might find a couple of things about me interesting. Or laughable... I'll take that too. So I bit the bullet. Gina from was very gentle and offered up some questions which really made me pause for thought and aren't the usual "how many words do you write a day?" Grab yourself a coffee or a Coke, click on the pic below, and settle back for five minutes of fun. |
We are joining in a neighborhood Garage Sale this weekend. So far, seven households are participating. In preparation, John and I have been sorting through bins and boxes in the basement, and turning up all kinds of stuff. Yesterday I came across this treasured clown painting; I remember it well from my childhood. This “paint-by-numbers” clown used to hang in my family’s home. It was one of my favorite paintings. As the “artist” in the family, I was a bit jealous of this clown — because I did not create him. He was painted by my older brother Glenn (whom I would eventually refer to as ‘my brother The Coach’). This clown may be the only painting my brother The Coach ever produced. I can’t remember any others. According to my Mom’s careful archival annotation, this work dates from 1964-1965 (I guess The Coach was a slow painter). This places the artist in his 6th and 7th years. You must admit, this work is very expressive for such an early artist. The brushwork pushes at established boundaries, constantly testing the rule of ‘staying within the lines.’ Obviously influenced by the freedom of expression that exploded throughout America in the mid-60’s, my brother The Coach created art that reflected his time. With only a tiny ‘brolly’ to protect him, the clown faces a rapidly changing world and looks straight into an uncertain future. All the while, he stands solidly on his own two oversized feet. Beneath disheveled appearances lies a man of integrity, and this is the clown’s enduring strength. I could not bear to see this masterpiece end up in an estate sale when my parents’ house was to be sold. It’s been about 10 years since I rescued the clown. I have held him in safekeeping for all that time. But now, I am ready to let him go. NO, I don’t plan to sell him to an unknown collector at the Garage Sale! I gift-wrapped him and put him in the mail today — it’s my brother The Coach’s birthday on Sunday. |
Congratulations to Julia for starting this and working so hard to keep it going. It's become a a very big thing! For those who haven't heard about the mega huge WOYWW movement, hop over to on Julia's blog where it is all explained. So, on with the motley... here is my anniversary piece (on my very messy desk) Ta-da! I have finally altered my bean tin (actually a tomato tin). Regular WOYWWers may recall seeing the poor nekkid tin holding some of my pens, pencils and assorted things that would fit in it, sitting on my desk awaiting adornment. Well, I thought it would be a fitting anniversary tribute to finally decorate the poor neglected thing. Of course, this meant my desk got even messier as I had to empty it out, and then I was working until late last night to finish it so stuff is strewn all over the desk (whaddya mean "what's different"?!) I covered it in grungepaper that I had inked with Wild Honey and Peeled Paint DI then stamped with Paper Artsy Hot Pick stamps (purchased at the Artsy Crafts event... I lurve those stamps) in archival Olive, Coffee and jet black inks to give some depth. I added a few extra little birds from Crafty Individuals. I then made some holes with the BIA and laced it on with some hairy, dangly thread stuff I had laying around. (oh, I painted the tin with a Willow paint dabber first). And here is the money shot. The famous acronym stamped across the top. My pens and stuff can now sit proudly in their new, suitably adorned tin. |
Recently, I was interviewed by Cafe Press, as a shopkeeper, for their Shopkeeper Spotlight column. If you're curious, check it out here: It's been a busy month, moving and adjusting to my lovely new place. It was a very successful move and I'm now back to producing designs for my shirts once again. It's a better life all the way around. This place is like home, and is double the size of my old place. The kitchen is a dream come true. There are so many cabinets (all new and spacious)and a lovely pantry. The attached solarium is full of natural light, for my orchids who reside there. The cats sit on the chair next to the plants, to watch the nature out back at the lake. Those windows are a never ending source of cat entertainment for sure. I walked to the grocery store for the first time the other day, and it was pleasant. The neighborhood is quiet, surrounded by a fence, and very private. Flowers are everywhere, and there weren't any people to be seen, anywhere. Perfect, quiet and peaceful. Many live up north and keep these condos as their winter homes, making it extra quiet for us residents. I loved my old place, but this is so much better in almost every way. And stores are so close, that makes everything so much easier for me. Walk to the store, then take a taxi home, costing a whole $2.50 in fares. Life is good. |
This is my company from last weekend--Courtney, Sarah and Holly. They drove a LONG way to hang out with us. We had a ball. We had dinner at Fitz's () in the Loop in St Louis. I had never been there--it was Julie's idea. It was great food. I even got them to eat fried pickles and I think they are converts now--it is hard to beat a good pickle and they make them right.
Sarah bought a hippie skirt in one of the cute shops there and Court shopped well too. We mostly people watched--the Loop brings out some interesting folk, especially on a Saturday nite.
Delmar, the street all the activites are on, also has the Walk of Fame--like in Hollywood where they have stars on the street for famous people. In St Louis it is only St Louis people, and it is always fun to read the stories--I forget how many famous people are from here. This is Julie while she was cooking at my house on Friday--she was smoking a turkey, which evidently does not require much after you get it in there. It was a GREAT meal too. She read a book and relaxed in the sun with her puppy Daisy while waiting for the PA girls to arrive Boce helped Julie rest. When he was not threatening to or actually taking a nip at Daisy (but I am sure she deserved it), that is
We had a great time all weekend. |
Sunday we wandered around down by the Space Needle and Seattle Center. Zoran and Dev went to another baseball game, so all afternoon I kept stopping to figure out where my missing kid was. Azia & the whale tale. Aren't these sculpture/ fountain things cool? I wish I had some in my yard. They'd be much more fun for kids to play in than my broken sprinkler. When I look at this photo, I'm once again relieved Azia decided these comfy white tennis shoes I found in the car as we were getting out went with the outfit she was wearing. The white patent leather heels with silver buckles she had originally escaped the hotel with may have looked cool but I'm sure she would've been barefoot by the time we made it to this fountain. And we still had like five more hours of walking through the city at that point. Azia and Israel checking out some of the sculptures. I love how there is art all over downtown Seattle. Sculptures and fountains everywhere. Many of them in the touristy areas are huge things like these climbable statues and the animal fountains. After checking out different installations over a couple days, we were walking under the huge orange piece over by the Science Center. Israel just stopped and stared up at it for a few minutes and then said, "Wow, people in Seattle must have a lot of free time." I asked why he thought that and he explained, "They have stuff like this everywhere. There's just art all over the place. People must not have to work very much if they have time to be building all this stuff." I guess my kids aren't familiar with the idea of "artist" as a real profession or job. Art seems to be something you get to do if you get all your real work done. I offered no commentary on this observation. I still haven't decided whether I'm pleased or bothered by it. Since we just had one afternoon down at the Space Needle/ Seattle Center area I told the kids they had to pick one of the places to go. It was a tough decision between the Science Center and (which they also love) but the decided to go with the Science Center. Lex and Israel in the dinosaur room-- seeing how they match up so some footprints. The exhibits are almost always interesting and well done (both interactive but also so full of information I never even get to half of it) but one of my favorite parts is the little play area for the tiny kids. This doesn't rotate like the other big exhibits (my kids were sad the "Gross" one from last year wasn't still here!) but it's just so well designed I always like looking at how things are put together while my kids play here. When someone gives me the millions of dollars to relocate Mission Valley Power from the center of town and build a community center/ school/ park there, the preschool area could be largely modeled on this. This water table runs the whole perimeter of the area. All sorts of floating boats, measuring things & that cool enclosed box in the upper left for spraying. There's a whole room for music--everything meant to be explored to see what sort of different sounds different materials and sizes and objects make. (And pretty sound proof from the outside when you shut the door!) There are little wooden cars and helicopters with working electric things...lights & sirens and such. I didn't think we were ever going to get Lex out of there. There's also a dress up area, a tree house loft for reading or just hanging out, a computer area and I love the giant pinwheel built from a truck axel. Little kids turn the crank on one end and twirl a huge pinwheel 8 feet above their heads. None of it's fancy but it's all thoughtfully designed & much of it clearly makes the science behind the fun clear. When I build my version the high school science classes will be in charge of designing and building these things as well as coming up with new additions. That ball is really cool. Israel is just trying to convince Lex that's the case. Sometimes Lex isn't really very easily convinced. This is in the little mini-fair / amusement park at the bottom of the Space Needle. Lex thought riding on this little fire engine was much more exciting than riding to the top of the Space Needle. He is obsessed. We rode the monorail back downtown. Israel had to ride in the front right next to the operator so he could figure out how everything worked. He gave me a full report of facts and discoveries about how the machine was operated. I don't remember any of it now. He probably still does. |
Teacherscribe’s Teaching Tip #98 My dream assignment #2: parents come to my class and students go to their parents’ work for a day. How cool would it be to have the parents come in to my classroom for a block while their son or daughter went to their job? I’d love to see the parents work on an essay or read “A Rose for Emily” and then take some homework home. I think the parents would learn a lot and gain a better appreciation for what their kids go through on a daily basis. I think, though, what parents would learn would pale in comparison to what the kids will learn about what it’s like out in the real world. And I think that is the most valuable lesson they could learn. And it might just make the student appreciate what goes on in class a bit more. They might have to write an essay, but that is nothing compared with having to deal with a disgruntled employee or back a sixteen wheeler into a loading bay. |
Subsets and Splits